Aker Solutions ‘staffing up’ with 300 jobs in Aberdeen after recent wins

Aker Solutions ‘staffing up’ with 300 jobs in Aberdeen after recent wins

Recruitment drive follows 19% rise in order backlog to £5bn since start of year

Oilfield engineering service group Aker Solutions has said it is to boost staff numbers in Aberdeen following a string of contract wins.

The firm is looking to create 500 jobs, including 300 in the Granite City, with most of the new recruits joining its subsea division.

Aker’s recruitment drive follows a rise in its order backlog of 19% to £5billion since the start of the year, with most of the new work involving subsea and drilling technology.

The company has won a string of significant multi-million-pound contracts over the past few months, including a £14million front-end engineering and design deal with Statoil after the Norwegian firm restarted plans for its Mariner and Bressay projects.

Alan Brunnen, a managing director with Aker in Aberdeen, said: “We anticipate that workload levels will remain high over the coming years, which is why we are staffing up our UK organisation now.

“We want to be well placed to capitalise on future opportunities that arise in our markets.”

Earlier this year, Norway-based Aker announced plans for 300 jobs in Aberdeen but this was for between 2011 and 2016.

A spokesman for the company said yesterday the recruitment was being brought forward because of new work coming in.

While recruitment in Aberdeen will mostly affect Aker’s subsea technology operations in the city, 70 positions will support work for maintaining and upgrading North Sea oil platforms to extend their field life.

Aker’s well-service business also needs more technical and ancillary staff as does the firm’s drilling-technology business.

In addition to the jobs in Aberdeen, Aker is creating 200 engineering positions within a year at its recently set up global engineering hub in west London.

It said it had already received 2,000 job applications for these posts.

Aker employs just 25 people at the London office and has a target of recruiting 500 for the operation by the end of 2015.

Valborg Lundegaard, the group’s head of engineering, said: “Our company has had a historical presence in London, so this is a re-entry to an engineering market we know very well.”

Aker Solutions employs more than 2,500 people in Scotland and has smaller offices and facilities in England at Great Yarmouth, Maidenhead, Stockton- on-Tees and Whitstable. Globally, the group has 17,000 employees and a further 6,000 contract workers.

Earlier this month, Aker Solutions said its revenue fell during the second quarter of 2011, to £874million from £906million a year earlier.

It said disappointing issues over project delays had dented the results.