OilVoice - Sparrows Wins Multi-million Pound 5 Year Contract with BP

Sparrows Wins Multi-million Pound 5 Year Contract with BP

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Sparrows, the Aberdeen-based offshore lifting engineering specialist, has signed a new multi-million pound contract with BP Exploration which will see the company provide all crane and lifting engineering services on BP's 26 UK offshore installations and at their 4 onshore terminals through until 2015.

The deal, worth in excess of £15 million per annum, means that Sparrows will have had an unbroken relationship spanning 40 years with BP in the North Sea. It was in 1975 that Sparrows sent its first offshore crane operator to work in BP's Forties Field, and Sparrows has been BP's principal offshore lifting engineering and crane operating/maintenance contractor in the North Sea ever since.

The contract secures 76 jobs at Sparrows in the BP 'core' team on and offshore, but also provides work for many other Sparrows employees locally. In 2009, for example, additional engineering design, project management, maintenance, modification and repair works on and offshore provided work for the equivalent of a further 52 full time employees at Sparrows - and the 2010 workload is significantly greater. The new contract is likely to create a further 6-10 jobs with Sparrows.

'Taking together the core team, the wider engineering work scopes and the support teams in HSEQ, HR, Finance, etc, the BP contract - which is Sparrows' largest in the UK - provides secure employment for 140-150 Sparrows Aberdeen-based staff,' says Sparrows Executive Director, Eastern Hemisphere, Richard Wilson.

'Winning the new BP contract was an important measure of Sparrows ability to adapt to new client needs in the rapidly changing world energy market,' says Richard Wilson. 'In no way is the new contract a simple renewal of the previous deal - it represents new ways of delivering greater value to BP, while still maintaining the highest standards of safety and equipment integrity which are vital for safe offshore lifting operations.'

The contract covers: crane management, operation, maintenance, modification and upgrade; provision of offshore riggers, rigging lofts and rigging equipment; lifting engineering support for shutdown and other maintenance/modification projects; certification of fixed lifting equipment; 3rd party review of lifting plans; and provision of lifting expert consultancy services to the BP technical authority.

'Sparrows 40 year partnership with BP is an example of all that is best about what the oil and gas industry has brought to Aberdeen,' says Sparrows chief executive, Doug Sedge. 'As our first client in 1975, BP gave us the opportunity to form a new Aberdeen company. Their contracts have already provided 35 years - almost a career lifetime - of highly skilled and well-paid work for 100+ of our people locally. The company they helped us to create now employs around 1500 people worldwide, over 900 of them in Aberdeen and offshore UK, and is one of Aberdeen's big success stories on the world energy services stage.'

Sparrows received the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2010 for export development, having more than trebled export sales to £78 million annually from total sales of £165 million.

Experience
Jeff Adams was Sparrows' first employee onto BP Forties in 1975 - and he's still offshore today!

Jeff was one of the initial group of eight Sparrows crane operators assigned to work offshore in BP's Forties Field - and as if to prove that whole careers really have been built on the BP contract, he's still working offshore with Sparrows today.

'It was 1 September 1975 when I was assigned to operate the cranes on BP Forties Alpha,' says Jeff. 'We practically watched the Forties jacket being installed. Those were pioneering days.'

'Crane operation was considered the second riskiest job offshore after diving. Sparrows introduced a marked difference in crane operation offshore, as we managed to achieve an excellent level in safe operation.'

As for the training they received to prepare them to work offshore, Jeff smiles: 'Well, there wasn't much back then. We were thrown in at the deep end, and just got on with it. Later on in the seventies the first offshore survival training started. It consisted of showing us some slides of the work sites and environment offshore, and then sitting on an upturned rowing boat in Aberdeen harbour to learn about survival at sea. The first fire training was even more memorable. It took place in Dundee. We were asked to wear the breathing apparatus and walk uphill on one of Dundee's main streets to experience the breathlessness resulting from the effort and the mask. We did, and decided to stop and peer in the window of a local bank; needless to say the trainer wasn't pleased!'

Jeff spent 18 years working on BP platforms, moving through the ranks from Crane Operator to Senior Crane Operator and then to Foreman Crane Operator. He transferred in 1993 to Sparrows Training, before returning to offshore operations in 2000 since when he has worked as a crane operator on numerous installations.

If Jeff (64) is Sparrows longest-serving offshore employee, there is one Sparrows employee who can claim even longer service on BP installations.

Scott Leslie joined Sparrows in July 1988 and, in October that year, was assigned to the BP Magnus platform where he worked until 1999 when he moved to the BP Andrew platform. Scott (54) still works on BP Andrew, giving him 22 years unbroken service with Sparrows on BP installations in the North Sea.

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