Our Services
Comprehensive Expertise in Pipeline Engineering and Consultancy
r+k Consulting Engineers provides in-depth consultancy in pipeline engineering, with a unique focus on integrated pipe-soil behavior – especially in soft delta soils. We combine advanced analysis, creative problem-solving, and cross-sector knowledge through our collaboration within the BT Engineering Group. From design to dispute resolution and incident investigation, we support clients with clear, robust, and independent advice on technically complex challenges.
A Solid Partner
How We Work
At r+k Consulting Engineers, our specialized team focuses on modeling and analyzing integrated pipe-soil structures, with particular expertise in soft soils typically found in river delta regions. The western part of the Netherlands – Holland – is a classic example: a drained swamp area with highly compressible soils that pose unique demands on underground infrastructure.
Our engineers offer more than just technical calculations. We work closely with our clients to fully understand their questions and challenges - ranging from technical feasibility and design optimization to risk assessment and incident resolution. We analyze stresses, strains, deformations, and potential instabilities in underground pipeline systems, evaluating them against applicable standards. Through sensitivity analyses, we also assess the impact of data uncertainties, helping to build robust designs and well-informed decisions.
What sets us apart is our ability to combine analytical precision with creative thinking. Clients value our strength in translating complex technical issues into clear insights and actionable solutions. This approach is further reinforced by our collaboration within the broader BT Engineering Group. This partnership gives us access to expertise from other sectors – such as civil engineering, structural safety, material behavior, and hydraulic engineering – allowing us to tackle multidisciplinary challenges with an integrated and effective approach.
Our support goes beyond pipeline design and assessment. We regularly assist in technical dispute resolution, serve as expert witnesses in arbitration cases, and conduct forensic investigations following pipeline incidents. We have contributed to investigations by the Dutch Safety Board and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, among others. In one example, we helped identify the vessel responsible for damaging an offshore pipeline – using deformation patterns to estimate the ship's size and tracking maritime data to pinpoint its identity.
Our expertise is broad, in-depth, and firmly rooted in practice. Whether it's about optimizing designs, investigating damage, or supporting policy and permitting processes, we act as a trusted technical and strategic partner to pipeline operators, contractors, water boards, peer consultancies, and government authorities.
Our expertise
Offshore Pipelines
r+k has longstanding experience with offshore pipelines, based on the experience with onland pipelines, but extended with the typical sea environment conditions.
Experience with offshore pipelines started in 1972 with a request of Shell UK Expro to assist, based on its onland pipeline analysis developments, with the design and analysis of riser-tie in structures. The start was the interaction between the riser, (attached to the platform structure) and the sea line, (often on a slippery sea floor) with the tie-in in between. Each element has its own conditions and its own contractor and thus its own approach to analysis. That’s why the boundary conditions at the interfaces between these three elements became the problem. The pipeline structure, however, acts as one structure and r+k Consulting Engineers was asked to integrate the behaviour of the pipeline as a whole.
One aspect that evolved from these studies was the development of the dog-leg type tie-in. Other experiences followed, i.e.:
- on-bottom stability
- differentiated riser tie-in structures
- bottom tow and J-tube riser pull-in
- free span analyses
- pipeline self burying
- upheaval buckling (overbending onland)
- presweeping
- incident analysis (e.g. anchor hooking, cable sawing…)
Expertise
Onshore Pipelines
r+k Consulting Engineers is since 1965 specialized in the strength and stability design and analysis of onland pipelines in soft soils as they often occur in river delta areas and especially in the West of The Netherlands, where most of the areas are below sea level.
Experience with pipelines in soft soils started in 1965 with the request of Nederlandse Gasunie to design an analysis method to determine the stressing in and displacements of high pressure pipelines at dike crossings. The reason was that permits were required from the various waterboards and no method was available to prove the safety of the dike at the crossing. |
Media may be hot (e.g. heavy crude oil) or cold (e.g. LNG) with low (e.g. potable water; thin walled) or high pressure (e.g. natural gas; thick walled). |
Pipe material, soil properties and loadings may differ along the pipe axis. Experience is available with various pipe materials such as steels, plastics, glass fibre reinforced plastic, cast iron, concrete and even asbestos.
Various analysis methods are being applied: linear elastic and geometric structural behaviour; linear elastic and geometric non-linear behaviour; elasto-plastic material together with linear or non-linear geometric behaviour.
Analyses have been based on various Pipeline Codes: NEN 3650 (Dutch), BS8010 (Great Britain), DVGW G 463 (German), EN 1594 (European), ANSI/ASME B31.3, B31.4 and B31.8 (United States), Belgian Law.
Expertise
Soil Movements
Part of the specialization of r+k is its ability to analyze pipelines in moving soil bodies, such as consolidation and mining subsidences, landslides, earthquakes etc.
Earthquakes may deform pipelines due to the pressure wave in the soil, but the soil may alter its properties as well as a result of such pressure waves and the accompanying vibrations. Liquefaction is such an alteration. A fine sand layer may become a heavy fluid, where the pipeline gets positive buoyancy or the fluid can flow under local heavy loads (e.g. buildings).
At the location of a fault the pipeline may become severely loaded by the deformations and ruptures of the surrounding soil body. In general the imposed soil loadings have a 3 dimensional character. The more ductile the pipe material is, the less is the probability that a rupture or leak will be the result.
r+k Consulting Engineers has contributed to an international research on the subject.
Our Key Numbers
- Experience in Pipeline Engineering
- 60+ years
- Consultancy Assignments Completed
- 500+
- Projects in Soft Delta and Polder Soils
- 100+
- Trusted by British Gas, DNV, Shell, Gasunie, Rijkswaterstaat a.o.
- 25+ years
- Expertise in Different Pipe Materials
- 10+ Materials
- International Experience
- 15+ Countries
- Projects with Complex or Custom Engineering Solutions
- >75%
- Your Project is next
- ...