Score Danmark A/S: Pioneering Innovation in Valve Technology
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The oil and gas, and offshore industries make use of numerous valves in their operations, all of various types, size, class, and function. With over a decade of experience behind it, Score Danmark A/S is a specialist in valves and valve related equipment, offering a total valve management package with technical support and assistance, performance monitoring, and overhaul, modification and maintenance services.
The company is the Danish subsidiary of Score Group plc, which took its first steps into the oil and gas industry 30 years ago as a supportive hand in valve and gas turbine maintenance. Still headquartered in Scotland, UK, today the Group continues to offer intelligent valves and gas turbine solutions, and has the world’s largest stock of valves and accessories to its name. It has also expanded its scope as an engineering company into other product bases and markets complimentary to its expertise, with capabilities in research, design, supply, manufacture, sales, repairs and modification, certification and training.
Whilst like many other businesses in the wake of the financial downturn Score Danmark has found the market more difficult in recent years, managing director Tim Percival highlights how there has also been a more positive upside born from a need for quality: “There is a huge issue in Europe for faulty materials, and as such in the last six months we have seen a lot of demand from customers for our technical capabilities in engineering and metallurgy, and the expertise and experience of our staff.
“The market is starting to become aware of the need to be more versed on the source of their materials and the design of the product, so we are now doing a lot of design reviews where we actually check these details for the client. It has gone from the client specifying something and us supplying it, to the client asking us if a specification is good enough, and hiring the team to carry out surveys offshore to look at what is already in place.”
One of the biggest sectors for Score Danmark at present are systems for condition monitoring of the performance of actuators and valves, which help to prioritise maintenance resources. The installation of these systems is becoming vital in many countries like Qatar where legislation states that flared gas must be reduced, and critical valves monitored. To this end, the Score Group operates its own internally developed system known as V-MAP, which continuously monitors, alerts and reports on valve performance and conditions through data collected from dedicated sensors, and previously stored data.
Based in the city of Esbjerg, Score Danmark is not only responsible for its local market, but also Parts of mainland Europe, Qatar, and Greenland. As such, whilst the use of V-MAP in Norway over the last four years has been of great interest to the market, it is only in the last 12 months that the company has seen demand coming from Qatar and the Danish sector.
Aside from the upsurge in the valve monitoring side of the business from the Middle East, Score Danmark is also pursuing other work in the region: “We have been quite busy with services for Maersk, primarily in replacing, repairing, and taking corrective action where needed. There are a number of new rules in place that state when you replace a product you now have to improve upon the safety of it, so a lot of our work is in coming up with replacements for existing products that are superior in quality and safety. Over the next 12 months we see that many key projects are not based in new-build, but the replacement of old and existing infrastructure with more up-to-date components,” describes Tim.
Whilst changes in manufacturing in the recent past have seen a lot of activity shift from Europe to more eastern parts of the world such as China and Asia, Score Danmark believes that pressure for superior products may slow down this flow. “Over the last few years the heavy contracting sector has been fortunate in securing supply of everything for a project, but as such the client loses control of the critical components used. Therefore I see the potential for this work to swing back to the specialist companies like Score Danmark to design and apply these components, and then issue them to the heavy contractor for installation,” explains Tim.
“At Score Danmark we can actually design the valve from scratch, or carry out design reviews on existing specifications. We have a pool of engineers and personnel with specialisation in all aspects from metallurgy to manufacturing, so our technical capabilities are really at the fore. However, if the client wants to have a quality, safety and technically superior product, the market has to accept that this expertise comes at a slightly higher cost. It would seem that this message is getting across as in the last six months we have seen significant growth in clients hiring Score Danmark for our manpower and expertise, and this now forms a large part of our turnover,” he concludes.
Score Danmark A/S
Products: Valves and accessories