Runway lighting for the Escravos airstrip.

The situation

The Escravos airstrip serves one of Chevron Nigeria Limited’s most significant oil and gas production facilities. Airfield lighting is safety-critical infrastructure: it is subject to stringent technical standards, and there is no tolerance for a system that works most of the time.

What we did

Working with Onos Technical Services, we carried the design, supply and installation of the runway lighting system — specification against the applicable airfield standards, international procurement of the lighting and control equipment, site installation, and commissioning within the operating constraints of a live terminal facility.

Why it was difficult

Two reasons, and neither is the lighting itself. First, the quality regime: work executed inside Chevron’s engineering and HSE environment is documented, inspected and audited at a level most contractors in the market do not routinely work to. Second, the operating environment: an airstrip serving a production terminal cannot be taken out of service for the convenience of a contractor, so installation has to be planned around operations rather than the reverse.

What it demonstrates

That the company can execute high-consequence systems inside a demanding international operator’s quality and safety environment, and produce the documentation to prove it afterwards. For a client assessing whether a Nigerian contractor can hold an IOC standard, this is the reference that answers the question.