Rigmar Training Centre
Accessing potential
Established during August 2012, Rigmar Training Centre was founded to provide the North East of Scotland with a leading facility dedicated to non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and Industrial Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA) rope access training and consultancy.
Rigmar Training Centre has enjoyed great success in only two years of operation. Today the facility is a leading training centre in non-destructive testing (NDT), NDE, IRATA and rope access for clients across 27 countries worldwide, with customers including major operating companies such as BP and Shell. Rigmar Training Centre employs experts in the field and currently holds over 60 years combined offshore and onshore experience. Furthermore the company is fully accredited by the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT) and has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 certification from the awarding body Det Norske Veritas (DNV).
Since it was opened the Rigmar Training Centre has enjoyed huge development and accelerated growth resulting in the company doubling the size of its premises, allowing the facility to today cater for as many as 30 students at any one time on courses from two days to seven weeks. By December 2012, £500,000 had been invested into the facility to provide state-of-the-art NDE and rope access training capabilities. The facility itself spans 3000 sq ft and has been furnished with the latest apparatus and technologies to create the best possible learning experience for all candidates. The site boasts technologically intelligent lecture rooms, large practical areas and on site catering facilities to deliver a comfortable working environment for both practical workshops and classroom activities. The administration and management team also has its own, custom-built office suite, creating an efficient hub for all national and international operations. The Rigmar Training Centre is conveniently located on Aberdeen’s Wellington Road, only five minutes walk from the city centre and a popular route of local public services, making the facility a simple location to reach from all parts of the city.
The success of Rigmar Training Centre has been meteoric, as founder Ray Wilson says: ‘When we launched the Centre, our vision was to create a centre of excellence for NDT and rope access training as well as consultancy services. The response from the market has been extremely positive and in addition to a high level of demand from the self-sponsor market, we have secured contracts with CAN Group, Scotia Automated Inspection Services (SAIS), Global REEL Group, Servtech and Axiom NDT amongst many others. With around £750,000 turnover to date and another projected £250,000 for the remaining part of the year we hope to achieve close to our £1 million turnover focus, which is a great performance for a business established just over two years ago. With recent BINDT audits carried out at the facility this month we are very proud of the efforts made by all staff and their commitment to meet with compliance.”
As such Rigmar Training Centre has expanded its reputation in line with the rapid development of its training facilities and has already secured work in overseas countries such as Ghana, Tengiz, Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria. Indeed the company sees international operations as a key growth area as it continues to expand. “With the support of our BINDT accreditation we are in a fortunate position that we can deliver training at our East Tullos Training Centre or the convenience of having training delivered on site,” Ray elaborates. “In addition to our work in the North East of Scotland, we are involved in projects internationally and have already visited several countries to support in the execution of training updates and nationalisation projects.”
During 2013 Ray travelled to Ghana and Tengiz, Kazakhstan to support AquaTerra and Servtech respectively in the implementation of nationalisation programmes. Under these projects Ray addressed any skills gaps with the organisations and developed training plans to ensure that all team members are trained to an internationally recognised level.
Further to offering training and examination services in rope access and NDE operations, Rigmar Training Centre is able to provide comprehensive consultancy services, where it works closely with its clients to audit their NDE and rope access capabilities to identify weaknesses and develop bespoke campaigns around individual training needs. These auditing services allow the company to create training packages that are tailored to the location and the industry that its clients are working in. It offers a full range of competency assessments, evaluations, auditing and procedure drafting to deliver a complete training solution including introductory, familiarisation and awareness courses as well as advanced training programmes.
Although the company has already enjoyed huge success, Rigmar Training Centre is showing no signs of slowing down; rather it is focused on further expanding with four new staff, increasing the training team to 15 by the end of 2014. Commenting on the future of the business, Ray concludes: “Rigmar Training is always on the lookout for new opportunities and ways to improve service satisfaction. Feedback from our customers has revealed an increased focus on competency based training programmes. We are currently seeking approval that will enable us to deliver industry leading competency systems. This will allow us to assess an individual’s competence in the skills, knowledge, understanding and experience required to carry out NDT and rope access activity.”
Rigmar Training Centre
Services: NDT and rope access training