Energy engineering consultancy Prospect expects business to pick up this year after a challenging 2010, with up to 20 new jobs in the pipeline.
Andy Doggett, managing director of the Aberdeen-headquartered business, said that while he regarded 2010 as a tough year, it had been significantly better than 2009 when, like other engineering consultancies, it had been hit by the early year downturn in oil prices.
“A lot of what Prospect does can be described as discretionary spending (by operators), so it’s easy to turn off,” he said.
It also did not help that the company was acquired by Hallin in the middle of 2008, when oil prices were at an all-time high and just before the financial meltdown.
“From that point the business went through a different trading period that might not have been recognised by its then new owner, subsea contractor Hallin, because being a later cycle player, it was experiencing reasonable levels of business, whereas Prospect was not,” said Doggett. “It’s fair to say such events had a profound impact on the business.”
However, Doggett said that Prospect, which is ultimately owned by US group Superior Energy Services (via Hallin), and not Neptune as indicated in Energy last month, was now set fair for growth, having last year significantly improved performance and its client base in the North Sea, plus out of Singapore and Houston where its US sales office has grown into a fully fledged engineering consultancy.
In a conversation just ahead of chancellor George Osborne’s North Sea tax bombshell, he said that 2011 would continue the improvements of 2010 and that 2012 would be much stronger.
Singapore is seen as important to the planned growth.
Prospect is currently 60-strong, much the same as at the time of takeover.
But Doggett said the mix had changed and that the firm was on the recruitment trail.
“I would say that if we don’t have another 20 people working in the company by the end of this year, I’d be very disappointed. In three years, I can see as many as 50 based in Singapore.”