Workforce Solutions
Crewing a 21-day platform turnaround at four weeks' notice
A turnaround window pulled forward by a month left roughly 60 offshore-ready trades to source, vet and certify.
- Oil & Gas
- A North Sea operator
- Central North Sea
- 11 weeks, mobilisation to demobilisation
The challenge
What we were asked to solve
A vessel availability change moved a planned shutdown forward by four weeks. The operator's incumbent supplier could cover the core mechanical trades but not the full scope, leaving around 60 offshore positions to fill against a fixed helicopter schedule.
Every person had to arrive fully offshore-ready: in-date BOSIET or FOET, MIST, a valid OGUK medical, shoulder measurement inside the aircraft limit, and a clean Vantage POB record. A single certification gap discovered at the heliport costs a seat, a bed and a day of the critical path.
The work also carried a hard competency floor — CompEx for the electrical and instrument scope, CISRS for access, and Rigger Level 3 for the lifting programme — in a market where the same people were being chased by three other campaigns in the same window.
What we did
How we ran it
Read the scope, not the headcount
We worked from the work pack and the P6 turnaround schedule rather than a list of job titles, so the crew was built discipline-by-discipline against the actual sequence — trades arriving on the wave they were needed, not all on day one.
Screened compliance before we screened availability
Certification, medical expiry and Vantage status were verified at first contact. Anyone whose BOSIET or medical would lapse inside the campaign window was flagged and re-certified before mobilisation, not after.
Built a bench, not just a shortlist
For each discipline we carried named, pre-cleared cover at roughly one in six. Late drop-outs were replaced from a vetted bench the same day rather than restarting a search.
Ran a single mobilisation tracker
One live view of every person's tickets, medical, travel and POB allocation, shared with the operator's logistics team. The client could see the flight manifest firming up rather than asking for it.
Stayed on it through demobilisation
Timesheets, offshore rotations and demob were managed to the same tracker, so the close-out pack and final cost position were straightforward rather than reconstructed.
“The difference was that nobody turned up at the heliport with a ticket that had expired. That sounds like a small thing until you've lost a seat and a bed over it.”
The outcome
Where it landed
The campaign sailed on schedule with a fully certified crew. The figures below describe the shape of this engagement type and are illustrative rather than audited client data.
- 58 of 60
- Positions filled inside the four-week window
- 100%
- Crew cleared on certification and medical before flight
- Zero
- Compliance-related no-shows at the heliport
- 1 in 6
- Pre-cleared bench cover carried per discipline
NE Project Solutions is a young business and these are representative examples of the work we deliver, written from real UK market practice. Clients are described generically and never named, quotes are attributed by role only, and figures illustrate the shape of each engagement rather than audited client data.
Disciplines
Roles delivered
The disciplines this engagement called for — a useful shorthand for the kind of work we resource in oil & gas.
- Mechanical Fitters
- Rigger Level 3
- CISRS Scaffolders
- CompEx Electricians
- Instrument Technicians
- Valve Technicians
- Blasters & Painters
- Permit Coordinators
- Turnaround Planner (P6)
- Materials Controllers
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