Dales Marine Services is taking its ship repair crews abroad. The Scottish-headquartered company has started an international mobile engineering service, sending its teams out to vessels in whatever part of the world a client needs them.
Until now its mobile team has worked across Scotland and the North-east of England. That team has already finished jobs in Europe and Africa, and the company has put money into equipment, tooling and training so its engineers can go anywhere, extending the work it carries out from five major Scottish ports.
Key points
- Work on offer: dockings, afloat maintenance periods, emergency repairs, mobilisation projects and complex engineering scopes.
- Equipment: containerised workstations that also act as power units.
- Deployment: at short notice, landed on a vessel’s back deck or on the quayside.
- Offshore wind: staff have passed Global Wind Organisation (GWO) Basic Safety Training and an NSL Rigging, Lifting and Banksman Slinger course.
- Annual workload: over 100 vessels in dry dock, more than 150 mobilisations and demobilisations, and over 500 afloat repairs across the UK and Europe.
How the mobile kit works
Each container carries a diesel generator, welding rigs, a compressor, consumables, cabling and tooling, so a crew turns up with its own power and workshop. Where it makes sense, Dales buys equipment and materials through local suppliers near the job, which it says makes the work quicker and more efficient.
The offshore wind training matters because GWO Basic Safety Training is the internationally recognised standard for working safely in that sector, the company said.
The business
Dales was founded in 1987 and runs dry dock and fabrication sites in Aberdeen, Leith, Greenock and Troon. Last month it urged shipowners to book year-end maintenance slots at its Leith and Aberdeen facilities.
Kevin Paterson, chief executive, said that after more than 30 years at Scottish ports, taking the firm’s expertise to clients overseas “is a natural next step”.
“When a vessel needs a docking, an afloat maintenance period or an emergency repair, what matters is getting the right people there quickly and doing the job safely,” he said. The mobile teams, he added, let the company make fuller use of skills its workforce already has.