ERM’s North Sea business is growing so rapidly that it has relocated to a larger home in Europe’s oil capital way ahead of when had been anticipated.
ERM is no stranger to Aberdeen, having had a strong client base in the city for many years. However, it is only about 18 months ago that it opened an office in the city and since then the workload has taken off.
“We now have 20 people here covering a whole range of disciplines,” says partner James Davies, who leads the Aberdeen consultancy unit.
“The sort of work that we do covers the full breadth of environmental, sustainability, safety and risk consultancy. With the changing regulatory environment and the big focus on safety and protecting the environment in the North Sea, the experience that we have has very usefully been brought to bear here to help client operators and contractors.
“We do a lot of work in the oil and gas industry around the world. We have worldwide agreements with many of the majors and we’ve been working for them a long time.”
ERM is a near $1billion business with its headquarters in London. It is perhaps the largest pure-play environmental and safety consultancy in the world and has 5,000 people across 150 offices in 40 different countries.
With an already broad office presence in the UK, including London, Manchester, Oxford, Edinburgh, Bristol and Swansea, it was decided to establish a permanent presence in Aberdeen to better serve the clients operating in the North Sea and, where appropriate, the wider global oil and gas market, which accounts for the largest chunk of ERM’s entire portfolio.
“The only way to do that was to build a significant local presence. That made sure that we could respond quickly to the needs of clients and that we were staffed up with people who thoroughly understood the needs of the UK oil and gas industry,” says Davies.
“In 12 months we have achieved what we originally expected to take three or four years.
“There are clients here that we had previously been serving from other offices. Now that we have the Aberdeen presence it’s been possible to do even more for those clients, as well as doing work for others.
“ERM’s integrated service offering covers early stage exploration, appraisal, concept select, FEED and detailed design through to operations and finally to decommissioning.”
The international dimension is entirely consistent with Aberdeen’s status as a global energy hub. Indeed the city is seen as becoming an important hub for ERM’s international oil and gas business.
“The model in Aberdeen is to reflect what we have done successfully in other hubs such as Houston,” says UK and Ireland commercial director Steve Matthews. “It is about creating a regional centre of excellence for providing integrated services and innovative solutions to our existing and new clients.”
Logically, this includes clients that have a regional footprint extending out of Aberdeen into Eurasia and Africa, where ERM has also significant oil and gas experience.
“The plan is to develop a number of strategic hubs around the world,” says Matthews. “For us that is one of the main accelerators for ERM growth.
“Aberdeen is one of our biggest investments this year. We expect the rate of growth for this office to be ahead of any other in the region.
“It sits in a perfect time zone and a lot of people and clients in Aberdeen work into Africa and Eurasia, so there is a natural set of linkages.
“Globally oil and gas is our biggest sector; and all our largest managed accounts are oil and gas; representing about 40% of the business. Of that, upstream accounts for the majority.”
Scale is a key differentiator for ERM. Matthews adds: “As a company we are a pure consultancy. There are not many consultancies out there that can claim a business the size of ours, with the breadth of services on offer. We have learnt a lot through our experiences and we hope that this brings a lot of value to clients active in Aberdeen.”
ERM: The facts
o Leading global provider of environmental, health, safety risk, social consulting services and sustainability related services.
o Over 150 offices in 40 countries, employing more than 5,000 people.
o Committed to providing a service that is consistent, professional and of the highest quality to create value for their clients.
o Over the past three years worked for more than 50% of the Global Fortune 500 delivering innovative solutions for business and selected government clients.
o Worked in 160 countries and territories over the past three years.
