John Crane wins UK North Sea maintenance services deal

John Crane Asset Management Solutions (John Crane AMS) has secured a £3 million ($3.8 M) contract to provide condition-based maintenance services with a “major operator” in the UK North Sea.

The company said on Wednesday that the work under the three-year deal covers rotating equipment across 12 assets and infrastructure sites and includes deployment of a specialist engineer to the operator’s UK offices to support reliability improvement.

The agreement extends the contract which John Crane AMS held for the past eight years and involves engineers mentoring their onshore and offshore compatriots with the client.

In October 2015, John Crane announced it had acquired XPD8 Solutions, an Aberdeen independent asset management business. All employees from both firms who were based in Aberdeen have now transferred to one site, which includes offices and workshops, at Centurion Court on North Esplanade West.

According to the Aberdeen-based firm, the latest contract, which apart from an initial three years has two one-year options, will enable the strengthened team to further increase asset performance.

Rod Mackenzie, UK reliability engineering manager at John Crane AMS, said: “We will be supporting the client in transitioning from a mostly time-based maintenance program to a condition based maintenance and reliability centered program. This approach allows full ownership of each plant, with all data captured and used to ensure assets are working efficiently with any issues identified before they reach the stage of a breakdown.”

To clarify, John Crane Asset Management Solutions is a trading name of XPD8 Solutions Limited, which is part of John Crane, itself a division of the global technology company Smiths Group Plc.