Acteon's latest acquisition offers real-time 3D underwater surveys.
Acteon’s newest operating company is NCS Survey Ltd, which it acquired in May 2011. NCS Survey, based in Aberdeen, UK, provides services for high-precision rig positioning, construction support and subsea visualisation to the global offshore market, including upstream oil and gas, and offshore wind.
Although it is now one of the largest independent survey contractors in the UK in the oil and gas sector, NCS has only been in existence since 2005. The company originally concentrated on two sectors of the market: positioning for rig moves, and surveying and positioning for construction support. It won rig-move positioning contracts with Shell and BP in its early days.
Andy Gray, NCS’s president and co-founder, takes up the story. “Those were our two core activities until the end of 2008, when we invested in lightweight autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), which we started operating in 2009.
“Our philosophy is to take the survey vessel out of offshore surveying, so, instead of having a dedicated survey vessel to do the work, we can operate from much smaller, more-efficient vessels, or even from the client’s construction vessel, without any impact on the construction vessel’s time,” says Gray. “With an AUV you can obtain very-high-resolution results for probably about 30% of the cost of the traditional method, as you are essentially eliminating the survey vessel costs.”
The AUVs are only 3.2-m long, weigh 100 kg and do not require a major deployment system. The operator can programme the AUV on deck and deploy it over the side of the vessel. The vehicle performs 8 hours of survey work before rising to the surface for recovery.
The units are also extremely portable. Because they are modular, they can be divided into sections and packed into a set of cases each weighing no more than 25 kg for shipping around the world. “We flew one out to the southern tip of Argentina to do a two-day job. It was cheaper to ship the equipment all the way there and back than it was to mobilise a local survey vessel,” says Gray.
NCS believes it can provide higher-quality survey results because the AUV can go into areas that construction vessels cannot access, for example, in between jackets and around the base of a platform, and it can do this extremely safely because a vessel is not required to enter the 500-m safety zone. Another big benefit is that operators do not have to interrupt their drilling operations even when the AUV is surveying under the drilling rig.
Towards the end of 2009, NCS purchased the survey division of Sonar Research & Development, and has been able to take advantage of its subsea visualisation system (SVS). The SVS uses multi-beam echosounder technology to provide real-time 3D visualisation.
Gray explains, “The technology enables us to integrate underwater sonar with the positioning systems and then monitor what is happening in real time on the seabed. For example, if a client is dredging away a mound or if it needs to put a template on the seabed, our system will monitor and display that in real time, in zero visibility and/or high currents. Because it is in real time, you can monitor any changes in the area below the installation vessel. If an operator is laying mattresses to protect a pipeline, you can monitor the position and the orientation of each one as it is deployed and therefore you can control them, which hugely improves efficiency for the construction vessels.
“Last year, we used the SVS for real-time touchdown monitoring on the Nord Stream pipeline project: two 48-in. diameter gas pipelines being laid from Germany to Russia in the Baltic Sea. We monitored the pipelaying for the inshore section from a small survey vessel immediately behind the pipelaying barge and provided the 3D touchdown monitoring points in real time. This contributed to the barge saving 30 days on a 130-day lump-sum project.”
As is the case for other service companies in the oil and gas industry, one of the challenges NCS faces is the shortage of qualified staff. To address this, the company introduced a graduate training programme soon after it started up, and has recruited 25 staff under the scheme. “This has proved to be an extremely successful way of bringing new talent into the industry, and we expect to expand the programme in the next 12 months,” Gray says.
It is a strategy that has enabled NCS to maintain a high ratio of full-time staff to subcontractors. “We have one of the largest full-time staffs in the industry, with around 45 full-time offshore personnel,” says Gray. “We work on a ratio of about 80–90% staff to 10–20% freelance contractors, whereas most of our competitors work on a 50:50 ratio. It gives our clients confidence that they will have repeatability of service with the same people continuing to work on their projects.”
The decision to join Acteon came when NCS sought to grow. The company has doubled in size in the last 12 months but access to global infrastructure and an interesting portfolio of subsea clients meant that joining the Acteon group was the best option.
“Acteon is a large organisation and one that has a global footprint. Although we have worked in 35 countries, it has always been out of our Aberdeen office,” says Gray. “To succeed in marketplaces such as Brazil and South East Asia you really need to be based there to win the work, and Acteon has several companies in each of those locations. We also liked the team and the fact that rather than absorb the new company into its existing operations, Acteon retains a company’s identity and its individual strengths. Being a member of Acteon is going to be a great bonus for us in terms of winning larger contracts and more overseas work.”
For Acteon too, the addition of NCS will bring benefits to the group that extend beyond the expansion of its survey capabilities. “The acquisition of NCS Survey continues our strategy of defining and shaping the subsea services sector, and will enable us to support our customers with an increased service offering that complements the skills we already have within the group,” says Paul Alcock, Acteon executive vice president.