Courses in Dredging Engineering and Offshore Engineering have been given at the Delft University of Technology since 1922 and 1975 respectively. In 2004 these two specialisations merged to form the new MSc programme Offshore Engineering, a two-year curriculum leading to the MSc degree in Offshore & Dredging Engineering. Offshore & Dredging Engineering is multidisciplinary and is a cooperation between Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Marine Technology.

The knowledge taught in the master will allow students to design structures that need to withstand the extreme environment present offshore. They will learn about the relatively short history of the industry, the application of the ISO norms and regulations, how to appropriately design and offshore substructure and much more industry related knowledge. 

Offshore & Dredging Engineers design some of the worlds largest structures such as fixed and floating platforms for the oil and gas industry. They also design subsea pipelines and other subsea equipment for this sector. An important feature is the design of dredging equipment for land reclamation, maintenance and the recovery of embedded minerals in deep-sea locations. Another application of offshore engineering is the design of offshore wind farms. The Global Offshore Drilling Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 6.2% over the next decade to reach approximately $153 billion by 2025. An impressive recent operation in the Offshore industry was the decommissioning of the Brent Delta topside. Where the Pioneering Spirit, one of the largest vessels in the world 124 x 382 m vessel, lifted the 24,000 tonne topside off its structure to take it to a dry dock for further decommissioning. 

Scope

The offshore & dredging industry is a relatively young, international industry, which has expanded globally in the last fifty years. Almost all new offshore & dredging engineers work in the private sector. The offshore & dredging industry’s relative ’youth’ means that problems often arise that have never been encountered before. This means that offshore & dredging workers (and students of offshore & dredging engineering) must possess a great deal of ingenuity and demonstrate initiative in addressing and resolving problems.

Specialisations

The programme consists of four specialisations: Bottom Founded Structures, Dredging Engineering, Trenching & Deepsea Mining, Floating Offshore Structures and Structural Design & Analysis. 

Students with a BSc degree in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering can enrol in this programme. Students with a different background should first consult the staff of Offshore Engineering to explore the possibilities.