Fabricom will engineer up to 40 jobs in the North
Aug 23 2010 by John Hill, The Journal
ENGINEERING firm Fabricom Offshore Services hopes to add 40 more staff in the next year, 80% of which are expected to be based at its Tyneside home.
The subsidiary of Belgian energy company Fabricom GDF Suez has won a design contract for work to upgrade the Claymore oil platform in the North Sea.
The contract with oil and gas company Talisman Energy UK will in itself mean 20 staff recruited to its 60-strong workforce.
Director Alan Cairns said: “With this contract there’s an ability to roll on to the next phase. It’s initially a six-month contract that could turn into an 18- month to two-year project. We’ve got about 60 people in Newcastle and this secures their jobs and another 20 on top of that for the next 18 months. I would realistically like to take us from 60 to 100 in the next 12 months.”
The two-year-old firm has worked for Talisman on several projects in recent years, and this relationship has allowed the Balliol Business Park firm to consolidate through a period in which its oil and gas sector client base has been reluctant to green light big spending projects.
Fabricom had told The Journal last June that it aimed to bring its staffing levels up to 200 by 2012. Mr Cairns said: “It’s had a demonstrable effect on the drive of clients to spend money. Projects that were viable became unviable. But we’re starting to see now that there’s a lot more work in the marketplace, and we’ve been doing work with Talisman for about two years. We’ve grown each year since the business started, although this time around it’s probably not as dramatic an increase as I would have hoped.”
Fabricom, which also has an office in Aberdeen, specialises in on-and-offshore services for oil and gas companies, including engineering and maintenance of North Sea platforms.
It is currently working with Storengy UK in a technical and consulting role on the development of a gas storage facility in Cheshire, and may be interested in dipping its toes into renewable energy work if the right project becomes available. Mr Cairns said: “We’ve remained in our core market, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider the Storengy work as our traditional marketplace. We’ve done that work because our skill set is applicable to that kind of project.”
The company is also keen to add another four trainees to its current roster of six, which it has developed with the help of organisations such as Tyne North Training.
A pair of apprentices have just passed their BTEC national diplomas at Tyneside College with distinction, while the firm has hired another student from the same class. Fabricom has also hired two apprentice technicians, with another to come in September, and has brought in a graduate chemical engineer and a graduate instrumentation engineer.
