Seven Seas Services Group: Visionary Leadership Since 1986 in Serving the Maritime Industry’s Diverse Needs
Designed for comfort
The Seven Seas Services Group was established in 1986 by its chairman and managing director Freddy Sidhwa, with the concept of offering a wide spectrum of services to the maritime industry.
Since its inception, the Group has grown to become one of its local region’s leading maritime services providers with a primary presence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Bahrain, Singapore, the US, Australia, and Djibouti.
Comprised of eight individual operating companies, Seven Seas Services Group is uniquely positioned to act as an all-encompassing one-stop marine services centre to its customers. This includes numerous specialist contracting services for both offshore and shore-based industry sectors, such as the supply and maintenance of marine safety and fire-fighting equipment, ship repair, refurbishment of crew accommodation, tank cleaning and sludge removal, implementation of marine communication systems, technical support, and complete logistics assistance.
As a part of this structure, Seven Seas Services, which is one of the Group’s main divisions, focuses on turnkey accommodation solutions for the offshore, and oil and gas industries. “With a dedicated team of experienced design, services and sales engineers, supported by a project department with skilled site staff and project supervisors, Seven Seas Services carries out complete design, engineering, procurement, and construction of accommodation modules for oil platforms and vessels. We also specialise in the maintenance and refurbishment of existing accommodation platforms,” describes business development director Shahvir Sidhwa.
Through these capabilities, Seven Seas Services can tackle projects on all levels from a steel box through to fully equipped accommodation space including rooms, toilets, galley, laundry rooms, mess rooms, and machine spaces. As such, the company has executed prestigious projects for several marine and offshore companies, drydocks and shipyards, as well as government and private organisations including airports, hotels, office complexes, hospitals, educational institutions, and industrial projects.
In terms of recent work, Shahvir highlights a few of Seven Seas Services’ most prominent projects: “We were recently awarded the contract for the refurbishment of the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Sagar Samrat rig by Gulf Piping Co. The job is currently being undertaken in Abu Dhabi, and is a very prestigious project for the Government of India due to the history attached to the Sagar Samrat asset as the rig that made most of India’s most successful oil explorations from the 1970s. Another significant project that Seven Seas Services has been contracted for is the DOLWIN-2 development with Drydocks World Dubai, which is going to be the biggest offshore wind platform structure ever commissioned.”
Having established a strong foothold within the maritime industry over the last two decades, Seven Seas Services has developed an ongoing reputation as a standard-setting leader in the region. “From concept development through to engineering and construction our skilled craftsmanship is one of our key competitive differentiators. Seven Seas Services prides itself on continuously delivering only the highest quality of work to each aspect of a project. Even throughout the recent more difficult years, where a majority of specialist contractors dropped their standards to minimise cost implications, we worked extremely hard to maintain and surpass our own quality standards. Our refusal to compromise on this has been one of the key factors in creating client satisfaction and building long-standing relationships with our clients,” notes Shahvir.
In order to maintain its commitment to operational excellence, Seven Seas Services believes it is imperative that it adopts the most up-to-date business processes by progressively implementing the latest technology trends, and emerging requirements of the marine and offshore industry. This is both in terms of safety and other stipulations in line with the class approval bodies, as well as keeping abreast of customer needs.
“We dedicate a lot of time and resources in keeping close to the industry,” agrees Shahvir. “We utilise proven systems and cutting edge technologies that enable us to deliver on project requirements in the most effective way. Recently we implemented a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to make our processes more efficient and help in the overall running of the business. We have also invested a lot in new machinery for our workshops and have implemented new design software to boost our engineering department.”
Although the marine and offshore market appears to have not been seriously affected by the recession in the Middle East, nonetheless Seven Seas Services has noticed a slow down in the new build market. In comparison though the number of repair and refurbishments works has significantly increased. Balancing both of these sides of the market, Shahvir is reasonably confident of the opportunities that lie before Seven Seas Services, both in and outside its current market: “Our primary objective is to maintain our position as the market leader in the offshore accommodation sector in the Middle East, and work harder to increase our market share even further. Currently we mainly operate in the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar, however having recently worked on smaller projects in India and Saudi Arabia we see high potential and plan to gradually expand into both these emerging markets.
“As before, we remain committed to total customer satisfaction and in dedication to this we plan to keep adding more expertise to the services we offer and continuously expand our offering to better serve our clients. In the next five years, our hope is to diversify into more activities that will compliment and further reinforce our existing business,” he concludes.
Seven Seas Services LLC
Services: Offshore accommodation solutions