HCS Control Systems Ltd
Next level solutions
Having undergone a £9 million equity funding deal during June 2013, HCS Control Systems Ltd has grown from strength-to-strength and continues to aggressively push its ambitious goal of reaching the ‘next level’ within the subsea market.
Since the business was last featured in European Oil and Gas Magazine during November 2013, HCS has reached a number of important milestones and taken significant strides in developing the company. These included the strengthening of the company’s team with new key personnel, such as newly appointed sales director Colin Milne who comments: “There have certainly been some milestones that HCS has reached in a relatively short time, for example the company has been accredited as compliant with the ISO18001 safety standard and has also recently exceeded its financial goals for the period since November 2013 – hopefully that will continue to be the case in moving forward.”
Further elaborating on his experience in joining HCS at such a transitional period Colin elaborates: “It is a very exciting time to have joined HCS at present, especially as it is a leading designer and manufacturer in subsea equipment, which is certainly the case from my perspective coming in. We have a team of highly experienced personnel and it has been an easy transition from a company where I had previously worked for 14 years to HCS, which is moving in the right direction with the company growing steadily.”
In addition to Colin’s appointment as sales director, HCS has increased its competence through increasing its workforce in its sales, engineering, purchasing and workshop teams in order to develop its sales strategy for ambitious growth. This has been done in tandem with the opening of a new office in Aberdeen specialising in sales and service support that rounds out its main 60,000sq.ft engineering and manufacturing facility in Glenrothes, North East Scotland. This combined approach is driven by the management team’s invigorated approach to growing the business, and in support of innovative new technologies developed by HCS in response to the problems faced by the subsea industry.
As a result of close engagement with its clients to identify the needs of the subsea sector, HCS has developed a new Zone 1 rated high-capacity electric umbilical reeler. As with all of its products and services, HCS offers a full turnkey package solution with its line of reelers and offers a dedicated spooling service where it will install the umbilical onto the reeler and deliver a complete field-ready system to the client. The Zone 1 high-capacity electric reeler it has developed is a patent-pending system owned by HCS that features a simple, yet highly reliable design that makes it highly suitable for use in hazardous areas of operation. In addition, the design offers several advantages over conventional pneumatic and hydraulic systems including reduced maintenance, increased control capabilities and more consistent performance, simplified fault-finding and diagnostics, increased data-logging capabilities, reduced requirement for spares inventory and the ability for integration with umbilical tension sensing.
HCS Control Systems’ umbilical reelers and high capacity reelers are complemented by a host of subsea products encompassing umbilical termination units, production control systems, hydraulic power units, and subsea distribution units, as well as orbital welding services and comprehensive aftersales and support services that are available to clients 24/7.
Today HCS is a leading subsea design, manufacture and support company throughout the world with strong relationships with clients operating in Europe, South Africa, Asia, Nigeria and India. Recently, the company was given a massive boost when it was awarded a multi-million pound contract with Aker Solutions to provide instrumentation and subsea welding equipment. The project will see HCS assisting Aker by providing equipment to be used in the BP Quad 204 development off the shore of Shetland, UK. As well as instrumentation and equipment, HCS will manage a project welding team responsible for manufacture at the company’s own facility and for the fabrication of equipment on site. Commenting upon the contract, CEO Brett Lestrange says: “The award from Aker Solutions is a fantastic achievement by the HCS team, and we look forward to providing an outstanding level of safe, high quality services to Aker Solutions. The award also bolsters our confidence to continue our rapid expansion plans, having already increased our headcount by nearly 30 per cent since June 2013.”
While the company’s contract with Aker has indeed proven to be an important catalyst to the growth strategy of the HCS management team, it is but one step for the business at it continues to grow as Colin concludes: “HCS was recently awarded two framework agreements by two major companies worth between three to four million pounds per year, which is another major milestone for us as a company. In relation to the business over the next three to five years we anticipate that the market will continue to be very buoyant with a lot of opportunities, and we also expect a definite increase in projects with the company’s current clients so things are looking very positive from an HCS and market perspective over the coming months and years.”
HCS Control Systems Ltd
Services: Turnkey subsea equipment solutions