OCCMS: OCCMS Preps Global Expansion Alongside Orion Group

Some of the world’s largest energy majors continue to search for modern, innovative solutions when it comes to commissioning and completion of vital projects that will enable and enhance the energy landscape now and into the future.

It’s a challenging and often costly endeavour, but safety, security and quality are at the heart of every project to be commissioned and completed. Starting up a new asset in a safe and timely manner is of the utmost priority for the operator of that asset and so it makes sense to partner with the best and invest in support that is proven in delivery.

Leading completions and commissioning management services company, OCCMS, has both the ability and the reach to provide impactful results for clients. Part of the Orion Group, OCCMS is based in Aberdeen and focuses on engineered solutions for commissioning and completions on energy infrastructure projects worldwide. OCCMS therefore has the capability and capacity to offer a range of services that others cannot, streamlining the approach and providing cost efficiency.

The Orion Group is an international technical resources specialist with 37 years of experience, initially serving the fabrication space for the offshore North Sea market but expanding geographically as well as diversifying into many other sectors. Orion has a strong history in providing added value services to its clients from simple global mobility scopes through to design and build of decommissioning infrastructure on nuclear decommissioning projects. OCCMS is another specialist business within Orion’s portfolio of businesses that collaborate to provide these added value services worldwide.  

Famed for its Orbit® software – a completions management system software that underpins excellence in project management and delivery – OCCMS is actively exploring opportunities in new markets, in new geographies, and with new customers while it excels with its current and often complex delivery of scopes and projects.

At the Centrica Storage onshore gas and processing terminal, OCCMS has been operating for a number of years, using Orbit® to help safely deliver commissioning and completions services. Over several phases, the infrastructure was upgraded while continuing to receive natural gas and associated liquids from offshore fields. The gas is transferred to the national transmission system and OCCMS work ensured the project has been a major success with 60,000 total onshore hours without a lost time incident, including during the Covid 19 pandemic. The company has also completed significant projects for Centrica Energies, First Exploration & Production, PBS, Total Energies, Glencore, Imperial Oil, EDF Nuclear, Addax Petroleum, ExxonMobil, HKN, Spirit Energy, Yinson, Conoco Phillips, Woodside, Worley, Oyu Tolgoi, Archer, and many more.

“In 2019, the company began to evolve into more of a completions and commissioning services consultancy,” says Operations Director, Jamie Japp. “We have gone from strength to strength during this period of growth, consolidating and pivoting with our strategy along the way.”

GLOBALLY RECOGNISED

Japp is looking to build the OCCMS reputation in new markets while leveraging the scope of services provided by Orion Group. With offices in the UK, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, USA, Canada, Oman, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Mozambique, Senegal, Vietnam, Uganda, Singapore, wherever projects begin, OCCMS gets the news quickly.

“In 2022 and 2023 we started a big push in the USA where we have offices in Houston, Chicago, and Jersey City. We have been building the brand there and winning new work, and that has been successful,” he details. “When we are speaking as a specialist business, we can engage with other offices and offer the parent company and their clients more than just a manpower supply provision – we can offer specialist services to help them deliver their projects throughout the full lifecycle from start to finish.” 

The innovation and invention of OCCMS and Orbit® combined with the capacity and experience of Orion Group is where real strength is achieved for clients. “When they speak to their clients, they can offer clients something so much more niche and bespoke,” says Japp. “We are helping and supporting regional and overseas offices so that they can think about us as an integrated business unit, asking what their clients are doing about commissioning and completions and the specialist technicians and engineers that go with that service.” 

Alongside deploying specialised technicians and engineers into the right places with the best software, the company makes use of a talent pool of professional contractors who are experienced in the field and also knowledgeable of OCCMS and Orion Group’s methodologies and culture. Importantly, these approved contractors also speak the language of Orbit® and Japp describes them as “the top 10% of individuals”.

This success was demonstrated with TAQA Bratani on the UKCS where the company’s onshore engineering department saw a need to streamline and more effectively monitor commissioning and completion challenges across five North Sea assets. Orbit® was rolled out, alongside the training of skilled personnel, and the client was able to make radical improvements to workflow, process management, and accountability in a short space of time. 

“We are actively delivering projects for a number of end users,” says Japp of the current project pipeline. “We look after a significant portion of commissioning and completions for Total assets in the North Sea – Alwyn, Dunbar, Culzean, Elgin, Franklin, and other assets. That is a contract that we are successfully delivering on for our key client PBS, now in year four of five and we have extension options that we will work with our client to support them as they continue along their committed path. We are still actively involved with Centrica and we have team members working at the Easington terminal and offshore on 3B Rough. That work comes from our reputation for safety, and the quality of delivery that we provide our clients. We deliver safely and professionally, and we understand the operations of our clients because we have been working together for a long time.   

“Longer-term,” he adds, “we are looking at projects that can be as minor as fire prevention software mods with one technician, right up to much larger greenfield projects which require higher volumes of resource to commission. We work right through the scale of what you’d find on a large project or operating assets –in the greenfield or brownfield spaces.”   

DIVERSIFY, GROW

When Orion Group started life in 1987, oil and gas was the unquestioned energy provision of the day. Even at the time of the formation of OCCMS in 2006, North Sea oil and gas remained vitally important in European energy strategy. But today, the energy transition is underway, and businesses must adapt. Those that are able to identify the opportunities and take advantage are those that will thrive. Japp says that OCCMS is perfectly positioned to adjust its position as the large UK based greenfield projects in the oil and gas space are few and far between compared with previous decades. “However, because we combine our statement of work operating model (SOW), supported by the might and global reach of the Orion Group and the smarts of what OCCMS can provide, we are perfectly positioned to collaborate and deliver on much larger scale projects who require commissioning and completions services in other countries and sectors going forward.  

“More recently we are seeing a surge in the request for Orbit® licenses and so we have pivoted and recognised that our clients don’t just need a black box with basic training. We now offer a bespoke part of the software service supply where we can build a database for the client and give them full training while supplying resources such as completions engineers to manage the database on their behalf,” he says. Furthermore, the supply of Orbit® can either be deployed on premise by the client or hosted on cloud-based servers on behalf of the client with the latter becoming more of a norm.

“We are pivoting into renewables and offshore wind,” he adds. “The language is slightly different in the way completions and commissioning are undertaken. We are adapting successfully to this necessary transition, and we are well-informed and better articulated in that space as we improve our understanding of our client needs.”

Orbit® Product Manager, Craig Finnie adds: “We are leaning heavily towards the software and the service of that software because the lifecycle of commissioning and completions is such that we still need to work through the execution phase into the operational phase, and we still need to verify what construction does, but the golden thread that pulls that all together is completions management and the verification of a quality assured and quality checked build. By pivoting, while keeping an eye on big projects and maintaining current clients, we have developed the software to operate online or offline, support digital or traditional paper-based completions, and can be deployed by clients on-premise or be fully cloud-based.”

The advantage that OCCMS brings here is flexibility, able to work in a more conventional manner or on a modern infrastructure, or as a blend of the two. Japp says that this delivery comes as a result of the company possessing a deep understanding of the commissioning and completions space – knowledge that all companies don’t necessarily possess. 

“There are many long-term providers and they all compete in the cloud space,” he says. “Our clients can use traditional methods and print off quality exhibits, checksheets, and tick boxes or we can provide a full cloud-based system, hosted on our network on their behalf, fully paperless and digital.”

The level of detail involved in completions management systems makes it challenging to manipulate and fit each project, and some companies try to offer a blanket approach across the market. This, says Japp, is not suitable for all clients and sectors and is why OCCMS continually supports, adapts, customizes, and updates its product and services range for their current, and future clients. 

“Our system will, ultimately, be much more than a completions management system,” he says. “Completions management is all about inspections and tests. When you engineer a project, there are many deliverables with many tags. Construction comes and builds the infrastructure around that, putting in all the instruments and controls, structural components, pipework, and power generation etc – all which have their own tags. Those then create form part of sub-systems that sit within systems. When it is all built to the design, it is mechanically complete. Commissioning teams then inspect everything to ensure it meets the design before moving into testing to prove and verify the design intent When all the sub-systems are pre-commissioned, they are dynamically tested together to ensure the package is ready to be handed over for operation.” 

Verifying everything and providing useable evidence is vital, and each client has its own internal process that Orbit® and OCCMS must align with. Thankfully, Orbit® is a powerful tool that has been developed over years of operation on major projects. “It provides all the evidence of successful completions management covering construction, commissioning execution, safe handover to operations, but we recognise that our system has the potential to do a lot more and we are developing Orbit® to do that now,” says Japp.

Further development of Orbit®, alongside a deliberate entry to new markets, while deepening relationships with key clients shows a level of ambition that others, in the current economic climate, are not necessarily willing to commit to.

“We want to be the best in the business,” confirms Japp. “We are mindful that we operate leanly – headcount-wise – just now, and we realise that putting everything into the oil and gas sector is not the answer,” he says, adding that clients don’t want the same as what has been done before, especially those further along their transition journey.

“We know we need to diversify, and we know we must invest as we grow the business. We want to embrace change and understand very clearly what our clients are looking for – even when they don’t fully know themselves and we have to lead them through our own experiences. Listening is the key. Orbit® is our proprietary software, we develop it all in house, and we operate out of our Aberdeen hub.”

PASSIONATE PLAYERS

Importantly, the service that OCCMS delivers is based around the knowledge, expertise and pioneering of people. It is a people business and a people-focused group. By creating a vibrant and trust-filled atmosphere, OCCMS’ Managing Director, Barry Cann, believes that the people in OCCMS will continue to drive and thrive. 

“We are a specialist business, and the company is family owned,” says Cann. “There is an intimate and personal feel about working here,” he adds. “We are all spread across all of our pursuits, and that makes you feel part of the everyday – you feel you can make a real difference to the success of the company and that your voice is heard. That is close to my own heart and that is what I enjoy most about being part of OCCMS and its future.”

The relationship the company enjoys with its parent company is remarkably positive, and the two work as extensions of each other rather than competitors. This fosters creativity and ambition whilst maintaining a collaborative and joined up feel.

OCCMS Global Sales Director, Andrew Mottershead, says: “We see the USA and Canada as big regions for us, and we have a lot of supportive colleagues in that region that we can collaborate with. We also recognise the Middle East as a huge opportunity, building on an already impressive client portfolio, word of mouth yielding an unexpected yet rewarding line of queries. Alongside the wider group, we are typically included in the tenders and pursuits they are involved with to bolster technical input and demonstratable capability, ensuring we have the correct accreditations and licenses to be considered for projects in those regions. Having a network of international offices and given there are commissioning or completions management component to any given project, we get that insight very quickly through our internal network.”

In the market today, there are few that can respond as quickly as OCCMS and few that can create a proposition with many of the world’s majors to call on as case studies. The company uses all its insight, from a range of project successes, and strive to always do better and more efficient work for our clients.

“When you develop your projects for tomorrow’s market, you don’t always know what that market will look like, but you know how it shouldn’t look because of all the learnings you have. We believe that we are developing something that our clients will truly value,” says Japp. 

“Our passion, experience, and intimate service provision is what we hope is enough for new clients to consider OCCMS for their future projects. We partner with our preferred local supplier, Scotia Instrumentation, for the supply of our test equipment, a relationship that has grown over the past five years. Their service is second to none and we are grateful to them for their continued support and expert supply and calibration services,” he concludes.

Whether its expansion, overhaul, or newbuild, OCCMS and Orion Group together deliver powerful technology and human capital. And when this mix is correctly applied, results and outcomes can be achieved in an unrivalled fashion – underpinned by safety and cost efficiency.