The contract marks a 40 year unbroken relationship between firms and will see Sparrows provide all crane and lifting engineering services on BP’s 26 UK offshore installations, and 4 onshore terminals until 2015.
The contract secures 76 jobs at Sparrows in the BP ‘core’ team on and offshore, and is likely to create a further 6-10 jobs at the firm. In 2009, additional work, such as maintenance, modifications and repair work, resulted in the equivalent of a further 52 full time employees at Sparrows, and the workload for 2010 has increased greater again.
The new contract includes: crane management, operation, maintenance, modification and upgrade, provision of offshore riggers, rigging lofts and rigging equipment, and lifting engineering support for shutdown.
Sparrows executive director, Eastern Hemisphere, Richard Wilson, said: “Taking together the core team, the wider engineering work scopes and the support teams in HSEQ, HR, Finance, etc, the BP contract (which is Sparrows’ largest in the UK) provides secure employment for 140-150 Sparrows Aberdeen-based staff.
“Winning the new BP contract was an important measure of Sparrows ability to adapt to new client needs in the rapidly changing world energy market. In no way is the new contract a simple renewal of the previous deal- it represents new ways of delivering greater value to BP, while still maintaining the highest standards of safety and equipment integrity which are vital for safe offshore lifting operations.”
Sparrows chief executive, Doug Sedge, said of the deal: “Sparrows 40 year partnership with BP is an example of all that is best about what the oil and gas industry has brought to Aberdeen. As our first client in 1975, BP gave us the opportunity to form a new Aberdeen company. Their contracts have already provided 35 years (almost a career lifetime) of highly skilled and well-paid work for 100+ of our people locally.
“The company they helped us to create now employs around 1500 people worldwide, over 900 of them in Aberdeen and offshore UK, and is one of Aberdeen’s big success stories on the world energy services stage.”
Sparrows sent its first offshore crane operator to work in BP’s Forties Field in 1975; since then it has been BP’s principle offshore lifting engineering and crane operating/maintenance provider in the North Sea area.
