Winning a Queen's Award during a pandemic
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.
On Tuesday 21 April OMS won our third Queen’s Award for Innovation. Perhaps the timing could have been better – winning such a prestigious award in the middle of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown is not ideal. The pandemic has had a profound effect on businesses throughout the country and OMS is no exception. Awards-related activities have been postponed, maybe permanently. We are not able to take our staff out for a celebratory dinner, the awards ceremony has been put off and even taking pictures of the team is difficult because our office follows strict social distancing rules.
The coronavirus crisis has presented a new set of circumstances and at OMS we are skilled at adapting to these. The pioneering weld inspection system that won us our third award has been developed over the past ten years in response to significant changes in the energy market and changing client requirements. Our latest inspection tool, the AUGA.node, is a robust, adaptable tool capable of operating at high speed in hazardous environments. It combines with our sophisticated software to give clients a comprehensive view of welds, allowing operators in the field to decide quickly whether a weld meets stringent inspection and safety requirements. Downtime and expensive cut-outs are reduced and pipeline lifetime increased. Higher quality welds means pipelines are safer and need to be replaced less frequently, lessening the risk of leaks and helping to protect the environment.
Innovation is at the heart of our business and is key to our repeated Queen’s Award success. This approach will help us continue to operate and improve our client offering throughout the coronavirus crisis. We will continue to adapt and to help our clients respond to the “new normal”.
Already Covid-19 has nearly derailed one project, an assignment involving inspecting aviation industry pipes in Iceland for which we developed a new method of operation involving a push/pull crawler to navigate various corners and “T” pieces. Instead of travelling to the inspection site we shipped the equipment, provided remote training and remote assistance to navigate the complex system. 80 welds were inspected successfully.
As the pandemic continues OMS expects to have to adapt to new ways of working and to changing client needs. When the crisis is over perhaps the world will have changed permanently and even more change will be required – as a business with innovation as our constant focus OMS is in a good position to continue our success. We are a bit disappointed to miss meeting the Queen this year though.
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Posted 05.05.2020
[5 minute read]
By Tim Clarke