Subsea excellence recognized

OE Staff Feb 7, 2014

Bibby Offshore picked up the company of the year award in Subsea UK's ninth annual business awards, held in Aberdeen.

The event, attended by more than 800 people form the subsea sector, was held on the evening of the first day of the Subsea Expo conference and exhibition.

Image: The ninth annual Subsea UK business awards winners.

Bibby's award recognized the Aberdeen-based company's continued growth and investment in people. The firm recently secured two multi-million pound inspection, repair and maintenance contracts.

Aberdeen-based ROV specialist ROVOP, secured the new enterprise award. Since it was established less than three years ago, the company has experienced strong growth, with turnover increasing from about £30,000 to more than £10million.

The company also recently ordered additional ROVs and has a strong order book for 2014-15.

The innovation and technology award went to Viper Subsea. The firm developed a method of combating water penetration, which results in system failure and loss of production.

The V-Life system is an electrochemical and electro-kinetic mechanism which is applied to the topside end of the umbilical and has since been deployed by a number of operators.

The award for emerging talent was won by Richard Bell of Aberdeen-based Apollo Offshore Engineering. Bell was recognized for his work in growing the company’s revenues in the north and south east of England. Richard was instrumental in developing Apollo’s process and flow assurance client base in Aberdeen.

The innovation for safety award was awarded to St Andrews-based Photosynergy for its development of Lightpath, a low power light source that can provide guide path illumination for a number of subsea applications with battery back-up to provide a fail-safe system in the event of mains outage.

Expro Group won the award for exports, having grown its revenues to more than £150 million in 2013, mainly due to its expansion in emerging markets, particularly West Africa.

This year saw the introduction of a new award, supported by UK Trade and Industry, which recognizes companies who are enhancing their competitiveness and providing tangible economic benefit to the UK from trade development activity.

The award was presented to Glasgow-based European Circuits, which provides integrated electronic assembly solutions.

This year’s outstanding contribution award went to John White, of VerdErg, formerly FUEL, recognizing a subsea career that has spanned nearly four decades.

Commenting on White’s award, Neil Gordon chief executive of Subsea UK, said: “John’s recognition tonight is thoroughly deserved. Having co-founded Furness Underwater Engineering (FUEL) in 1979, as one of the first specialist subsea engineering companies, he has become a well-respected figure in the industry.

“John led the design of the Diverless Maintained Cluster field architecture which was adopted by BP in the nineties for the Foinaven and Scheihallion fields, and subsequently the Quadrant 204 development, West of Shetland. Due to his strong leadership he has facilitated the five-fold growth of VerdErg since 2005.”

Gordon added: “The Subsea UK Business Awards have become highly coveted within the industry and the standard of entries this year was higher than ever before, underlining the strength of our sector both at home and abroad in terms of innovation, safety, technology and leadership.”