Aberdeenshire-headquartered, multi-discipline construction and maintenance specialist, AquaTerra Group, has reported an increase in turnover to £16.5million over the past year, as decommissioning activity continues to ramp up across the North Sea.
The business has also seen a noticeable rise in demand over the past 12 months, alongside expansion into international markets, reflecting its growing role in larger decommissioning programmes.
Over the past year, AquaTerra has delivered a series of major projects, often running in parallel across assets with very different technical and operational demands. This includes work on high-profile North Sea platforms such as Ninian South, Heather Alpha and Cormorant Alpha.
Across these projects, the company has supported a mix of complex scopes, from conductor clamp removal campaigns, through to topside preparation and removal works on Heather Alpha and Cormorant Alpha. In several cases, these programmes overlapped, which meant coordinating people and equipment carefully offshore.
Managing Director Stephen Taylor said: “A lot of the work we’re delivering now has grown out of relationships we’ve built over a number of years. We’ve supported these assets through their later-life phases, so when they move into decommissioning, we already understand the challenges and how to approach them. That continuity allows us to move quickly and deliver efficiently, because we’re not starting from scratch on each project.”
AquaTerra’s proprietary QuikDeck® system has been used across a number of these campaigns, particularly where access is constrained. It has played an important role in enabling underdeck work to be carried out more efficiently, while reducing reliance on traditional scaffolding in some of the more complex areas.
Recent work also includes the completion of a heavy lift preparation campaign on Heather Alpha, where all ten jacket legs were cut safely and ahead of schedule. The work was delivered over a 20-day offshore campaign, achieving a 10% saving against the original plan while maintaining a zero-incident safety record.
The company continues to support a range of decommissioning activity, including new contract awards to support the topside removal preparations on both East Brae and Brae Alpha. This reflects both the level of demand in the market just now and AquaTerra’s ability to adapt its approach depending on the asset.
To support that growth, AquaTerra has continued to invest in its people and delivery capability, with a focus on building multi-skilled teams that can move between projects as needed. This has helped the business keep pace with demand while maintaining safety and performance.
Stephen Taylor added: “The scale and pace of work over the past year has been a real step change for us. Delivering multiple projects at the same time, across very different assets, brings its own challenges, but it’s also where our approach adds the most value.”
With decommissioning activity continuing to build across the UK Continental Shelf and internationally, AquaTerra is positioning itself as a leading value driven partner for operators, tier 1 contractors and Heavy Lift vessel owners, to manage increasingly complex programmes.
The company will be exhibiting at the upcoming Decom Conference in May and has also been named a finalist in the Decom Mission Awards – Member of the Year, a sign of its growing profile within the sector.