These are exciting times for young north-east engineering firm Motive Offshore Services with staffing figures set to double by the end of the year.
The company, which manufactures and hires machinery for the offshore energy industry, recently achieved the ISO 9001 2008 accreditation from Lloyds – an accolade which has secured serious orders, fuelling the need for motivated and qualified people to join its growing team.
Motive currently has 40 members of staff and hopes to fill a number of vacancies by the end of the year, doubling the workforce.
The firm was founded two years ago by managing director James Gregg and fellow director Dave Acton. Rising staff figures have already seen Motive move from its previous premises at Cornhill, north of Huntly in December 2011 to a bigger base at Boyndie Drome, Banff, a former RAF site.
It has 1,500sq metres of offices, a 1,500sq metre fabrication workshop, a similar-size machining and assembly workshop, and a six-acre yard for storage and testing facilities.
The base is half developed and is due to be completed within six months.
With offshore operations going into deeper waters, wire ropes are getting longer and heavier, and spooling winches are increasing in size.
Motive has developed a comprehensive range of spooling winches, and can offer six-tonne, 25-tonne, 75-tonne, 150-tonne and 300-tonne capacity. They are also working on a design for a 450-tonne spooling winch which will involve some new principles.
The company recently delivered a 300-tonne capacity spooling winch for a client in Holland. The unit was designed and manufactured entirely in-house within a tight timescale and it is believed to be the largest-capacity machine of its kind manufactured to date, developed to spool large wire ropes on to winches safely.
Mr Gregg said: “The successful completion of the spooling winch for a client in Holland demonstrates to the industry that Motive Offshore Services can now be considered as one of the leading winch suppliers in the UK.”
Motive also has an equipment pool of various winches, HPUs, compressors and generators which are available for hire.
All equipment complies with relevant standards for use offshore and onshore, is manufactured either in-house or by an approved supplier and is exposed to a rigorous in-house maintenance schedule. Motive Offshore adopted a clean-slate approach and only stocks new equipment or equipment with full build data and appropriate service records. This is to ensure the reliability and safety of personnel.
The hire fleet includes drum winches from five-tonne to 240-tonne WLL, all required HPUs and spooling winches up to 300 tonnes.
Motive’s standard sales catalogue includes a range of type-approved drum winches up to 150-tonne WLL along with power units and spooling winches.
The standardisation allows equipment to be fast-track manufactured at a competitive cost based on value for money. Bespoke equipment is also offered and Motive has a dedicated design team for this purpose.
The company’s service department offers equipment operators and service engineers to service/operate equipment in offshore locations worldwide.
Dedicated service personnel are experienced and trained to service and repair various types of marine equipment such as winches, HPUs, compressors, generators and all associated equipment.
The service department is available to mobilise, service and operate all hire equipment and also offer service contracts for client-owned equipment. All staff are trained accordingly and are qualified to work on equipment onshore and offshore.
The department is growing rapidly and is becoming heavily involved in service contracts for various marine equipment from major clients. This includes rebuilds/refurbishment at their workshops.
Mr Gregg added: “We aim to offer the highest level of equipment reliability and customer service available in the market today and continually strive to be best in class.
“The experience, competence and drive from our staff is the key to Motive Offshore Services’ success and I am looking to build the Motive team further.”
If you would like to join the team at Motive, current vacancies can be viewed at www.motive-offshore.com/ current-vacancies
