PDi Stays Afloat as Ceona Goes Bust

Project Development International (PDi), part of Ceona, has secured more than £6 million in project awards in 2015 to date.

Aberdeen-headquartered, with offices in London and Houston, PDi was established in 2003 to provide multi-disciplined engineering, project management, project services and training to the international oil, gas and renewables industry.

In August 2012, Hammersmith-based SURF contractor Ceona acquired PDi to provide, as the company called it, another building block to Ceona’s growth strategy, only to fall into administration this month due to declining demand for its services as a result of the depressed market conditions and ongoing investment in its fleet.

However, despite its owner’s slump, during this year, PDi managed to secure decommissioning scopes which have moved to strengthen PDi’s place in the UKCS decommissioning market, and subsea construction in projects in West Africa working both with operators and offshore contractors.

PDi’s Aberdeen-based senior management was restructured in 2014 with Mark Gillespie, David Andrew and Declan Slattery joining as managing director, commercial manager and finance manager, respectively, while Donald MacLeod and Mark Brown were appointed as operations director and engineering manager.

Mark Gillespie, managing director at PDi, said: “Despite challenging market conditions, PDi operates a well-balanced business model benefiting from clients operating and decommissioning expenditure rather than purely capital expenditure. This has seen PDi secure over £6 million in project awards in 2015 to date, excluding intercompany awards.

“The strength of this backlog means our revenue visibility is better than it has been at any point since the new management team were introduced.”

Nevertheless, PDi will still have to deal with the impact of losing Ceona-related work which accounted for about 30 per cent of the company’s business.