How our latest Queen's Award win affected OMS
The latest in a series on our third Queen’s Award win and how the OMS approach to innovation affects our clients and our business.
Dr. Tim Clarke, OMS CEO, reflects on how the innovative weld inspection system that won the company its third Queen’s Award has had a significant effect on the company, its clients and employees.
“The decision to develop this technology was partly based on faith in the market rather than any actual income we were receiving at the time. We knew that there was a need for this particular technology but had to bear the cost of the initial developments and team up-skilling ourselves. When we started out our weld inspection system represented barely 10% of company income and even after some investment just reached 20%. Oil and gas companies were affected severely by the global recession and collapse in oil prices and OMS was no exception. For a while the future looked uncertain but fortunately we won two projects that were so substantial that weld inspection became 80% of our business.
Tim spoke more about the OMS approach to innovation in a previous article, in which he described the company philosophy as “slightly unusual” and “requiring nerves of steel” because the company invests heavily in developing new technology before receiving any purchase orders.
“Winning our third Queen’s Award was a huge achievement for several reasons,” Tim continued. “Firstly, these awards are the most prestigious business awards in the UK and very few companies win one. To have won three is exceptional, and I am immensely proud of our small and dedicated team.”
“Secondly, our award demonstrates to our clients that OMS quality has been recognised and confirmed by an exacting external authority. It gives them confidence that our weld inspection service can be relied on and gives evidence to reassure their own clients that they use the very best technology available.”
“Lastly, the Queen’s Award confirms that our approach to innovation is the right one. We have always been confident that our way of working, where we have back-up plans, we design and build new technology based on our extensive experience within the industry, we think through everything that could possibly go wrong and we always put our best people on the job – is the best. Winning our third Queen’s Award confirms we’re on the right track and gives our team and our clients even more confidence in the OMS approach, even if it is a little unusual.”
For more information about the award-winning OMS weld inspection system click here.
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Posted 21.05.2020
[5 minute read]
By Tim Clarke