Offshore staff
HOUSTON- Underwater Integrity Solutions (UIS), an independent company focused on subsea integrity management, has launched on the inaugural day of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.
"A global company that, from day one, is dedicated to subsea integrity, repair, maintenance, and the collection of data of this scale and size doesn't exist today, in terms of the independents," UIS CEO Bill Boyle tellsOffshore.
The idea for the company was conceived about two years ago, according to Boyle, and the company will be headquartered in Houston. It will be helmed by five people with more than 140 years' experience combined, acquired in about 14 countries around the world.
Having received $150 million of equity from private equity oil and gas investor HitecVision, Boyle said that one of the company's next steps is to make key acquisitions to better position itself in the market.
"The majority of money will go towards acquiring," he said. "Our plan is to buy and maintain the brand, to keep the people and keep what's in front of the customer the same. We will leverage the market that way."
With the company's founders having spent the previous stages of their careers concerned with capex, Boyle said that slashing opex from subsea integrity management is their new focus.
He explained by way of example that currently, inspection is performed by a multitude of different ways - including sound, vision, and lasers - by many different companies. UIS intends to find a more efficient way of operating, by performing these all at once. He also said that companies are often inefficient in their inspection processes. UIS wants to streamline these processes as well.
"You should inspect only what you need to inspect. Risk-based maintenance should focus on area of high-based risk," he said. "We come from the more traditional, capex side of business, so we know its all about boats. Our job, which is to minimize cost, is to minimize boat days. Through better inspection programs and by only inspecting what we need to inspect... we hope to make major savings."
05/05/2015
