How we won our third Queen's Award
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.
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s most prestigious business awards and have been described as the “knighthoods” of industry. In April 2020 OMS won our third Queen’s Award in the Innovation category for our pioneering weld inspection system. This is a huge achievement for our small and dedicated team – and is even more remarkable because this is our third win in less than 15 years.
How we did it – putting innovation first
OMS operates mainly in the small world of oil and gas. There are only around six major companies involved in laying pipe around the world and the market for equipment does not have any economies of scale. We have to keep innovating to meet our clients’ requirements.
Our innovation team is made up of people who specialise in design, mechatronics, electronics, manufacturing, software, assembly, testing and operations. The team can create a new product from scratch in a few months or adapt our existing tools in weeks.
Anticipating clients’ needs
The OMS approach is to develop new systems and technology based on what we anticipate our clients’ needs will be. This is risky and means we need to put a lot of work into understanding our clients – but it has worked for us. Because we understand the way our customers operate we create a new technology capability so when the customer suddenly realises they need something – we already have it ready.
This approach requires nerves of steel and commitment from the whole company. We work very hard to make the previously impossible possible, completing and testing new kit, sometimes under great stress. It’s a bit of a shame our clients don’t always notice our efforts – partly because they are far away and partly because our anticipatory approach means they assume that we have always been able to do that particular thing they were after.
Invest in what we believe in
We invest company time and resources in developments we believe in. When we started developing our weld inspection system it represented barely 10% of company income, rising to only 20% not long after. Around this time oil and gas companies, including OMS, were affected severely by the global recession and 2014 collapse in oil prices. Although times were very hard we managed to win two substantial weld inspection projects which had such a significant effect on the business that weld inspection took over from measuring pipe ends, which was our original primary service. Weld inspection now represents 80% of our business. (You can read more about how OMS survived the downturn here.)
Creating new processes
The oil and gas industry is regulated by an exhaustive list of safety standards and regulations. Every area of operation is governed by strict criteria and evidence must be provided that those have been met. OMS documents every stage of development and creates new processes where necessary, helping our clients provide evidence to their regulatory bodies and providing us with a huge bank of quality evidence for the Queen’s Award judging committee.
Queens Award regulars
We firmly believe that putting innovation at the heart of our business has led to our repeated Queen’s Award success. OMS won our first Queen’s Award for Innovation back in 2007 when the company barely had seven employees. We won for our unique equipment that measured the dimensions of pipe ends and drew straws to work out who would go to meet the Queen. In 2014 we won our second award for technology that could fit pipes together better, avoiding mismatches and improving welding. This time Dr Tim Clarke, OMS owner and founder, decided not to allow fate to get in the way of meeting the Queen and put himself forward for the honour.
In 2020 the award is for our pioneering weld inspection technology developments. We have not yet decided who will go to the ceremony – if one is held, which is uncertain given the Covid-19 crisis – but we would like to and are sure it won’t be the last time we get the chance to attend. Innovation has always been at the heart of our business and will continue to be – perhaps we’ll be applying for our next Queen’s Award from one of our offshoot technologies, which is set to tackle everyone’s favourite topic of complaint – potholes!
If you are interested in our pioneering weld inspection system please get in touch with us here.
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Posted 24.05.2020
[5 minute read]
By Tim Clarke