Offshore work

Hello Kevin,

Just to get some discussion going here on your site, I thought to ask, what are the changes of getting work from offshore, for a person who has never worked there before ? I´m talking about ndt work here of course.

Some guys here in Finland seemed pretty interested, when I got back home from Stavanger and mentioned that the work rythm in offshore could be two weeks work and four weeks off. But you need to have some offshore safety certificates to get there and they cost money, I´m sure, so you need to get on some company payroll first… but which company ? Westcon, Aker…what else was there ?

Is there any realistic changes of getting there ?

Anyway, take it easy there Kevin and keep the probes moving :)

Regards, Tomi Finland

Alright Tomi, how is it going there in Finland? You working with Harri? I’m not really sure about the offshore work availability but i can ask around. You would become instantly more employable if you pay for your survival ticket yourself. To get a regular slot offshore you need to find an NDT company that has a inspection contract with a maintenance company for the routine inspection offshore.

To work in the British sector you’ll need PCN 2 quals. Having an rope access ticket and a desirable inspection qual like eddy current would be a good way to get offshore i would say.

Thanks for the answer Kev. Maybe offshore work is out of reach for this lot over here then, because none of the guys have eddy current certificates, nor any money, to pay the for the survival ticket. And they can hardly survive here, let alone over there :)

I´m working as a sub-contractor for an inspection company called Dekra now. There are about 12 guys here (no Harri though), doing ndt for offshore windmill “bases”, which are going to be shipped somewhere over to norwegian coast (close to Bergen I think it was). Ruukki is the company who´s doing the job here ( www.ruukki.com ). It´s nothing rosy, but I get home for every weekend and also earn lots of money (hehe), so can´t complain.

SAS will now open a direct flight from my hometown to Copenhagen, just when I got off from there. My travelling time would be cut to half with that new flight, so it would make it easier to work somewhere abroad again. But need to see if anything interesting comes up…

Ok, take care. Tomi