Xodus Group, the Aberdeen-based energy consultant, is launching a new value, decision and risk-management service for the oil, gas and renewable-energy sectors.
The expanding business, which employs more than 270 people, believes this will offer clients significant cost savings, particularly in concept and pre front-end engineering and design work.
Graeme Birkhead has joined the consultancy from Aker Solutions to head up the service and is set to recruit a team of risk-management experts with at least five appointments expected in the next year.
The new service area will expand the capability of the technical safety and risk division at Xodus and is expected to bring in about £500,000 of new business in the next 18 months.
Colin McWhirr, director of technical safety and risk at Xodus, said: “We can offer a dedicated value, decision and risk-management service, which is crucial at the early stages of an engineering project.
“It is far more costly and time consuming to try and fix a problem at construction, so we advise that detailed upfront analysis into cause, effect and consequence as well as reliability can potentially save clients millions of pounds.”
Mr Birkhead will also be responsible for developing new bespoke decision-making tools.
He spent 12 years working in the defence industry and believes a similar scientific approach to risk needs to be applied in the energy sector.
Xodus chief executive Colin Manson said: “Risk management is a huge benefit we can offer to clients across all of our divisions.
“We believe our integrated approach will be successful because ultimately we can give oil, gas and renewables companies more confidence and remove much of the stress at the planning stage.”
Xodus also has offices in Edinburgh, London, Orkney and Perth, Australia.
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