Having built a strong reputation within the oil and gas industry in the North Sea, Cadherent’s Digital Innovation VR Hub in Aberdeen is increasingly applying its technology to other industries including renewables – and even whisky.
Cadherent's Digital Innovation VR Hub was conceived in May 2025 following the company's successful application to the Energy Transition Zone (ETZ) Challenge Fund, supporting Cadherent's investment in digital capability and diversification into the energy transition market.
While initially focused within the North Sea oil and gas sector, Cadherent has now been able to expand the scope of its engineering, survey and visualisation expertise to serve other industrial sectors such as renewable green energy and whisky distillery engineering.
The ambition was not simply to create a VR facility, but to bring these capabilities together within one integrated digital engineering environment.
The result is a purpose-built immersive engineering and collaboration space at Cadherent's Aberdeen facility, where clients can explore, interrogate and review complex projects at full scale before fabrication, installation or site operations begin.
One integrated digital engineering workflow
The Hub's real strength is its connection to Cadherent's existing survey, engineering and visualisation services.
Assets can be captured using 3D laser scanning or photogrammetry, engineering designs developed from real-world information, visualisations and animations created and projects brought into an immersive environment for collaborative review.
This allows engineering, access, constructability and operational issues to be identified earlier – when they are generally easier and considerably less expensive to resolve.
What can clients use the Hub for?
- Photogrammetry and digital site walkthroughs
Step inside digitally captured offshore platforms, distilleries, industrial facilities and buildings to revisit and understand existing assets remotely.
- Engineering and clash reviews
Review proposed engineering against existing conditions at full scale, making clashes, access restrictions and constructability concerns immediately easier to identify.
Examine layouts, access, operations and potential hazards collaboratively within an immersive environment.
- Pre-fabrication and constructability reviews
Review designs with clients, fabricators and installation teams before steel is cut or equipment mobilised.
- Offshore installation and lifting storyboards
Experience technical animations of complex lifting, installation, removal and maintenance sequences before offshore execution.
- Shutdown and brownfield planning
Review modifications within congested operational environments where access and shutdown windows are critical.
- Architectural design sign-off
Through Cadherent's Touch3D division, architects, developers and clients can step inside proposed spaces at full scale before designs and specifications are finalised.
- Training and familiarisation
Create immersive digital environments allowing personnel to familiarise themselves with remote facilities, working environments or equipment before travelling to site.
Reducing cost through better decisions earlier
Across oil and gas, renewables and distillery engineering, the principle is simple: the later an engineering problem is discovered, the more expensive it generally becomes to resolve.
The objective is not to add another layer of cost to a project. It is to use digital engineering to help prevent considerably larger costs arising later.
ETZ Challenge Fund support helped Cadherent accelerate an investment that is now becoming part of its wider integrated service offering, demonstrating how practical digital technology can reduce risk, control project costs and support more efficient engineering.