ADIL in expansionist mood... new contracts mean more jobs (P&J 01/11/2010) 10/02/2011

back to list

Aberdeen company ADIL (Asset Development and Improvement Limited) has secured a further significant new contract – more valuable and of longer duration than the $2.8million (£1.8million) arrangement with Bridge Energy that was unveiled mid October.

The latest deal will be worth significantly more than $3million (£1.9million) and has kicked off. However, a confidentiality veil prevents ADIL from naming the client.

Both are expected to con­tribute significantly to the firm's projected £10million or so turnover for 2011. This compares with £6-7million for the current year and £400,000 in 2006 ... its first year of trading.

ADIL's five core contracts, plus new work being nego­tiated will lead to more jobs, too. In essence, the firm is project managing several field developments with an associated total capital in­vestment in excess of £1billion.

The early November head­count is expected to be 55 or 56 of who around 30 are on staff.

Managing director James Paton told Energy that he ex­pected ADIL to end 2010 with around 60 people on board and 80 or 90 by the end of next year.

"We've secured quite a lot of work this year," he said.

"We were affected like most people in 2009 by the finan­cial crisis, but 2010 has been good because clients we stood by through 2009 have con­tinued on with us, plus we've won other projects.

"We have recently recruited a number of senior personnel and that positions us well for further growth. We intend to do more work overseas ... that will probably be by sup­porting an existing client overseas. We want to move that forward.

"We will need to take on more people. We'll probably end this year with around 60 people; then there will be a period of consolidation for about three months. But Q2/Q3 should see us start recruiting again.

"Part of that will be for lo­cations other than Aberdeen. There will hopefully be a Lon­don office. Where else is a big question."

In a nutshell, ADIL pro­vides project management teams packaged with asso­ciated management systems to enable its exploration and production company clients to develop new fields and/or overhaul production with a view to enhancing oil and/or gas output.

Paton continued: "They're not just technical people as we have a fairly strong supply chain team, HSE and plan­ning specialists and cost-con­trol people. In terms of en­gineering we're probably 50­-60% engineering people; the balance being the services and supply chain person­nel."

Paton, is also nursing an ambition to break into the provision of third party pro­duction and export infras­tructure for smaller players, especially now that a growing list of ageing North Sea plat­forms and pipelines are near­ing the end of their economic lives.

He said precedents exist in the US, for example, but stressed that ADIL would not become an equity holder in assets served by such a ven­ture.

This Article by Jeremy Cresswell appeared in the Press & Journal on 01 November 2010.