Firm digging deep to prosper under ocean

IT may look like any other smart town centre office, but what goes on behind the doors at Coniscliffe House is a bit more exciting than you may think.

For behind the staid and sensible red brick walls is the UK headquarters of DeepOcean, the nerve centre of a company which uses remotely-controlled machines to dig trenches, bury cables and create pipelines hundreds of metres below the sea – an altogether more interesting prospect than the average Darlington office block.

“Walking past the building, you would never know that what goes on behind this brick facade is to do with machines which operate under the sea all over the world,” said UK managing director Tony Inglis. “We just look like an office.”

Formerly CTC Marine Projects, the subsea engineering company is now known as DeepOcean UK, with Mr Inglis taking the reins for the UK operation from DeepOcean Group chief executive Bart Heijermans last month.

It is chartered engineer Mr Inglis’ second stint as head of the Darlington-based company, and already under his leadership they have won two multi-million-pound contracts.

Both men were appointed this year in a bid to turn the business around following a difficult 2011 for the company, when one of their projects lost them money and wiped out their profits.

But the company is now determined to move forward and grow.

“We have a very, very encouraging and supportive board,” said Mr Inglis, who is originally from Australia.

“They are very supportive of our ambitious plans to keep up on the growth rate.”

DeepOcean, which also has premises on Teesside, works around the globe, digging trenches on the seabed for pipes and cables to be laid. They provide this highly-technical, highly-skilled and highly-specialist service to one of the most lucrative industries in the world – the oil, gas and energy sector – which means contracts are typically worth millions of pounds.

The nature of the work means it must be carried out tens or hundreds of metres under the sea, making it undesirable, impractical and impossible for the work to be done by human hands.

Instead, the company has an array of remotely-operated underwater vehicles (ROVs), which carry out a range of subsea trenching jobs, enabling the company to lay different types of pipes and cables in varying conditions and terrain.

They range from the size of a small car to the size of a large house, with some used to investigate the conditions and others equipped with carbon-coated teeth to cut through hard rock.

“We own all the fancy bits of technology, all the really wackylooking, interesting stuff,” said Mr Inglis.

“The smallest ROV is still pretty large – about the size of a compact car. It is for surveillance – it has two arms and cameras. They fly around on a cable, they watch what we are doing down there.

They are our eyes, ears and arms down there.”

And, although the machines do all of the heavy lifting and moving, the company, which employs about 120 staff between its sites in Darlington and Teesport, needs a highly-skilled and specialist workforce of engineers and support staff to carry out its work.

“The biggest limitation to growth in the whole industry is trying to get the appropriatelyskilled people. I can’t always find engineers in the North-East. There is a global shortage.”

And, although oil and gas is still a growth industry for the subsea sector, partly due to large fields being sold to multiple smaller companies, the offshore wind farm industry is another that needs the services of marine engineering companies.

Here, Mr Inglis said the Government could help British manufacturing and engineering because the UK owns some of the North Sea bed, much sought after by energy companies.

“We need the Government to be pushing very hard at the Crown Estates level,” he said.

“One of the incentives they should give (companies who want to use parts of the seabed owned by the Government) is to say you will get better access to our real estate if you use UK contractors.

“I don’t think they are brave enough to write it down.”

Despite these difficulties in a competitive market, DeepOcean has much to look forward to.

As well as the two recently-won contracts, the company has started its longest ever pipeline contract – a 174km (108-mile) trench for China Offshore Oil Engineering Corporation (Cooec).

The work, commissioned for the Liwan 3-1 Project, is being carried out using the world’s most powerful jet trenching equipment, in waters up to 190m (620ft) deep.

A huge ROV – about the size of a small house – suspended from a vessel on a long cord, known as an umbilical, uses powerful jets to blast the seabed out of the way and lay the pipe at the bottom of the ocean.

Another ROV is sent down to bury the pipe to ensure it is secure underneath the seabed.

The project is a mammoth undertaking, involving two crews on the ground and support from the company’s Singapore office.

So has the size and scale caused any difficulties?

“The project has caused us a great deal of joy,” said Mr Inglis. “It is no more difficult over that length than it is over a shorter length, the interruptions are less and the project is longer.

“It is great to be doing such a phenomenally long pipeline anywhere, but particularly in China.

“We have a great relationship with the people at Cooec. It is a key part of the business plan for us for the foreseeable future. We will work very hard to keep that relationship.”