A MARINE services business is hoping to capitalise on the growing offshore wind energy industry as it opens its first office in Scotland.
Green Marine Solutions (GMS), which has been trading for a year and has its headquarters in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has already secured £450,000 of funding from Northstar Ventures, which valued the company at more than £2 million.
GMS used the money to complete work on its Real Time Offshore Asset Management (ROAM) software product for the renewable industry that can help to manage everything from safety certification of personnel to the transportation of large engineering components.
Justin Moseley, the Scotland-based managing director of GMS, will work in the new Glasgow office at the Scottish Enterprise Inovo building, in the city's International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone. Mr Moseley, a former Merchant Navy captain who then went to Strathclyde University Business School to do an MBA, was keen to be in the Merchant City site as there is a growing cluster of renewables firms.
There will also soon be an influx of academics at the Strathclyde University Technology and Innovation Centre.
Mr Moseley praised the support he received from Glasgow City Council and Scottish Enterprise and said: "From our perspective it is a great office in a great location."
He confirmed GMS, which employs eight people, is using Scottish legal and accountancy firms for its corporate functions.
The ROAM package is already being used by Siemens, and other operators in the UK and abroad are said to be interested.
Mr Moseley and fellow directors Richard Pargeter and Crispian Jones were involved in the delivery of the Greater Gabbard Wind farm off the coast of Suffolk and that experience has informed the way they have designed the software.
He said: "It is quite unique in that all the other software out there has been built for something else and then shoehorned into this industry.
"We are a marine service company for offshore wind and have had that experience from pre-construction to client handover. So we have learned lessons and seen what is required."
The software is also central to the other services GMS provides in areas such as kit supply, inspection, maintenance and bespoke training courses.
Mr Moseley said: "A guy [going on a boat] will have a life jacket, a radio, a personal locator beacon, a survival chute. All of these have expiries and need to be inspected and maintained.
"If you have a person who can't go because their safety certificate has expired that could lead to lots of costs mounting up.
"A large vessel sitting there could be £200,000 to £300,000 a day. If you lose that weather window because a crew member doesn't have the right certificates there may not be another one for however many days. The programme of works then gets delayed [and] it can quickly cost millions."
While four jobs will be supported in Glasgow initially, Mr Moseley believes there is a lot more the company can do to expand in Scotland.
GMS is also looking at export sales of ROAM and the possibility of adapting it for other sectors.
He said: "Our market is the UK as that is what we know at the moment but we are looking for Europe and then the wider world.
"While we have to be careful about diluting what we do there are cross-sector applications.
"The ability to track people and equipment [is valuable] as there is accountability and traceability."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article