A loudspeaker on a platform stops working. A telephone goes quiet. The first assumption is usually that the unit has failed, and the replacement gets ordered.
Often, the unit is fine.
Offshore communications equipment is built for punishment. Telephones, PA and general alarm systems from manufacturers like GAI-TRONICS are designed for high noise, harsh weather and corrosive atmospheres, and they hold up well. What tends to fail first is everything around them: the cable, the gland, the termination, the point where the system meets the enclosure.
That distinction matters, because it changes what you inspect, what you plan for, and what you do at installation.
The equipment is rarely the weak point
It’s worth understanding what offshore-rated communications equipment is built to withstand, because it explains why the unit is so rarely the problem.
GAI-TRONICS, part of the Hubbell group, designs and manufactures rugged communication products for environments where a standard telephone simply wouldn’t survive. Its hazardous area ranges, including the Auteldac series widely used on oil and gas platforms, are ATEX and IECEx approved and built to be weather resistant from the outset. Anti-corrosive enclosures, sealed keypads, conformal coating on the circuit boards and a wide operating temperature range are all standard rather than optional.
The range covers more than telephones. Paging and intercom, public address and general alarm, mass notification and radio dispatch all sit within it, along with the accessories that make communication work in high noise: acoustic hoods in corrosion-resistant GRP to cut background noise, sounders, and ring-initiated beacons that double as emergency evacuation alarms where ambient noise is too high to rely on sound alone.
In other words, the equipment is specified for the environment it’s going into. Which is exactly why, when a system goes down, it’s worth looking at the connection before condemning the unit.
The environment attacks the connection, not the box
Offshore conditions are hard on electrical systems in a specific way. Salt-laden air, persistent humidity and repeated wetting and drying create the conditions for corrosion on any exposed metal surface. Equipment enclosures are specified to resist that. Sealed to a high IP rating and built in materials chosen for the environment, the housing itself is designed to keep water out.
The weak point is where something has to pass through that seal.
Every cable entry is a potential path for moisture. If a gland is the wrong specification, poorly fitted, or paired with an incompatible enclosure material, that path opens up. Once moisture reaches the inside, the consequences are familiar: corrosion on terminals, insulation breakdown, unstable or intermittent signals, and eventually a fault that presents as equipment failure.
Intermittent faults are the tell
A useful signal that the connection, rather than the unit, is at fault: the problem comes and goes.
Equipment that has genuinely failed tends to stay failed. A connection compromised by moisture or corrosion often behaves differently. It works, then it doesn’t. It’s worse in bad weather. It clears up and returns. That pattern points towards a degraded connection rather than a dead device, and it’s worth investigating before a replacement unit is ordered.
Terminations are a maintenance item, not fit-and-forget
The practical shift here is to stop treating cable entries as permanent once installed.
Corrosion develops gradually, and it can progress a long way between inspections. Good practice is to check gland tightness, seal condition and enclosure integrity on a schedule that reflects how aggressive the environment is, rather than a standard interval applied everywhere. An asset in a heavy splash zone needs looking at more often than one that isn’t.
Adding cable entries and terminations to a planned inspection routine catches the slow failures early, when they’re a tightening job rather than a replacement.
Getting it right at installation
Most of the risk is set on the day the equipment goes in. A correctly specified gland, matched to the cable and the enclosure, properly fitted and sealed, will outlast one that was ‘close enough’. And termination work carried out on a deck, in poor conditions and against the clock, is harder to get right than the same work done under controlled conditions.
That’s the case for having the make-up done in advance.
At WES, we supply communication equipment, including loudspeakers and audiovisual devices, pre-terminated with cable gland, cable tail and optional junction box. The glanding and termination are completed and tested before the equipment leaves us, so what arrives on site is a finished assembly ready to install, rather than a set of components to be made up in the field.
It removes the most common failure point from the most difficult place to get it right.
Talk to us about your comms equipment
If you’re specifying communications equipment for a hazardous area, or looking at recurring faults on an existing system, we can help you get the specification and the terminations right.
Get in touch with the WES team to talk it through.