Blog

RVA Group experiences continental drift

RVA Group has cemented its position as an internationally-acclaimed engineering consultancy, having secured three prestigious new projects on three different continents.

In only the last six weeks the expertise of RVA’s specialist decommissioning team has been sought by clients in Canada, Singapore and the Netherlands. These new schemes of work – on top of ongoing projects in the UK and mainland Europe – mean the firm has a healthy forward order book and is continuing to expand its team.

RVA’s managing director Richard Vann explains: “The nature of our work is particularly complex and a somewhat unusual skill set is required to safely manage the inherently high-hazard projects that we oversee. Identifying the best people is therefore not an easy task as we are looking for such highly skilled professionals in their respective fields, be it chemical, structural, mechanical, or civil engineering, for instance. However there is a phenomenal amount of talent out there so now it is a case of handpicking the industry’s finest and gradually adding the RVA sector specifics to their already highly developed skill sets.”

With a resident project management role on the five month North American contract, RVA is set to supervise the meticulous dismantling of a complex petrochemical plant, for resale, relocation and reassembly in Eurasia. Elsewhere other RVA engineering experts are on two large chemical sites in Singapore and the Netherlands to support the client to manage the dismantling of redundant assets that are intertwined with operational plant and services.

Richard continues: “Projects of this nature are the very reason that RVA was established back in 1992, and international growth has long been part of our carefully planned expansion strategy. As our reputation has grown and our relationships with multinational blue-chip clients have developed, we have steadily secured more overseas work. These three new projects represent an exceptional achievement for the company and they are a testament to the capabilities and results of our team.”

This type of work is not for the fainthearted though. “We quickly have to acclimatise ourselves to varied local requirements to ensure legislative and environmental compliance,” Richard explains. “There can sometimes be language barriers and time zones present challenges too, when we need to communicate with colleagues on the other side of the world. Indeed with the current geographical spread, we can have colleagues separated by almost a whole day”.

But all of this simply represents a new dynamic for the business, concludes Richard. “We develop knowledge-based partnerships whether we’re working in the North East of the UK, or the Far East of the world. Our aim is to develop totally safe, environmentally sound and cost-effective regimes wherever we may be, and we will devise bespoke team structures and on-site methodologies to best tackle the challenges that any project poses.”

RVA’s work continues on nine UK projects nationwide.

Share

RVA Group joins specialist decommissioning forum

Specialist engineering consultancy RVA Group has been welcomed as a new member of Decom North Sea, a niche decommissioning forum established to help the oil and gas sector with the £35bn of decommissioning activity anticipated by 2040.

With decades of sector-specific experience working on some of Europe’s largest decommissioning and dismantling schemes, RVA is ideally positioned to deliver ARO assessments, feasibility and option studies and the full suite of project, safety and supply chain management services to organisations in this complex industry. RVA’s existing clients include Shell, BP, British Gas, Total and ConocoPhillips, to name just a few.

Speaking of the company’s decision to join Decom North Sea, RVA managing director Richard Vann said: “Having completed nearly 600 projects within programme and budget requirements, we hope to become a valuable partner within this collaboration of specialist expertise. It is widely acknowledged that the oil and gas sector will encounter many decommissioning challenges – onshore and offshore – over the coming years, so now is the time to start planning considered and best-value strategies that will ensure the safe execution of these projects.”

If you are a fellow Decom North Sea member, or if you have an oil or gas project that you wish to discuss with the experienced RVA team, then please call +44 (0) 1473 256890 or email office@rvagroup.org.

Share

RVA celebrates 20 years of success

2012 doesn’t just represent a significant milestone for the Queen and the UK’s hosting of the Olympics – it is also the year that RVA Group celebrates 20 successful years of business.

In 1992, having worked in the demolition industry for over 10 years, Richard Vann founded the company to offer specialist and independent advice to operators facing large scale industrial site closures.

It was apparent that when designing and building new plant, site owners and operators could benefit from a variety of professional industry expertise. However when it came to decommissioning, decontaminating, dismantling and demolishing sites, organisations usually had to step into the unknown.

Keen to improve the reputation that this engineering discipline had at the time, Richard was confident that something could be done to improve demolition safety records, avoid commercial disputes, ensure more efficient project scheduling, achieve cost-effective project deliveries and better protect the environment. RVA was therefore established to provide a focused, value-adding service within this niche marketplace.

Having started out as Richard Vann Associates, a sole trader entity, RVA Group now employs a large multi-disciplined team of hard-working and highly trained professionals. Over the past two decades RVA’s experience has grown, with the team having worked on some of the largest and most prestigious decommissioning projects in Europe. This has affirmed RVA’s reputation as the leading engineering consultancy in its sector, in the UK and beyond.

Richard comments: “Many organisations claim to offer decommissioning consultancy advice, but this is invariably an off-shoot of their core areas of competence. On the contrary RVA has remained true to the ethos upon which the company was founded, and clients realise this.

“We have continued to concentrate on what we do best, whilst rigidly remaining totally independent from the supply chain. We cover virtually all areas of the decommissioning cycle but tend to be able to add maximum value on large-scale, complex and high hazard industrial sites. This is where our specialist guidance and experience is most sought. Our expertise spans the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, energy, oil and gas industries, and because of this, we have an impressive portfolio of blue-chip clients from across the globe.”

As RVA’s reputation has grown so too has the number of overseas opportunities. “We acknowledged from an early stage that our suite of specialised services was not available in many international locations. So whilst working hard to maintain a solid UK presence, we also began marketing our services to organisations in Europe. At the same time we worked on a number of complex UK assets owned by multinational corporations.

“Praise for RVA soon spread due to the robust relationships we started to develop, and the standard with which our projects were completed. We have now established a number of partnerships around the world and will tirelessly to safeguard and expand upon these.”

When asked what truly makes RVA different, client David Pullan, Nufarm Limited’s Group Executive of Operations said: “We selected RVA because of their experience in our specific field, their clear understanding of the issues involved, and their industry specific track record. We were not disappointed.

“Decommissioning and demolition in the process industries, and especially in chemicals, carries many potential hazards which are not encountered elsewhere, and in-depth experience of this industry is of paramount importance in monitoring and controlling such works. In our experience RVA delivered this through a team of first rate people and effective administrative systems for technical and commercial management of the contracts involved.”

Richard concludes: “The whole team is incredibly proud of RVA’s achievements over the past 20 years, and we now look forward to maintaining our careful expansion and sharing our expertise with a greater number of clients in Europe and further afield.”

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, which falls on Sunday 18 November, the entire RVA team will be attending the Institute of Demolition Engineers’ AGM and luncheon at Lord’s Cricket Ground. If you have worked alongside RVA in the past and would like to congratulate the team on their 20 years of success please email admin@rvagroup.org or send @RVA_Group a tweet.

Share

Getting to grips with demolition ‘waste’

Having amassed a wealth of experience in the the specialist arena of heavy-industrial plant decommissioning, RVA is well placed to comment on the ever-evolving level of waste management excellence in the field. This month RVA contributed to leading waste and recycling magazine Secondary Commodity Markets. Read on to find out more…..

“Since its inception the demolition industry has been a committed recycler, acknowledging the commodity value and demand for materials that can be salvaged during domestic, commercial and heavy industrial executions of work. In reality it was probably one of the first ‘green’ disciplines.

For decades, contractors have yielded a revenue stream from the recycling of materials such as bricks, slates, and copper nails and piping to name but a few. However, as environmental pressures mount and legislative developments continue apace, a greater number of contractors, consultants and clients have heightened their commitment to the ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ mantra. Sustainable working practices have rocketed up the project agenda and as a result, organisations have experienced multi-faceted benefits from the careful and continuous management of demolition projects’ waste streams.

Even the soft-strip (internal clear out) and subsequent demolition of a small domestic building can enable recyclates to be recovered. Yet the larger and more industrial the programme of works is, the greater the scope for advanced salvaging methods and the wider the variety of materials that can be retained.

A vast number of processing plant owners throughout the UK and EU are closing their sites as they rationalise their activities, relocate their operations or prepare to upgrade their equipment. Consequently they face the predicament of determining the safest, most cost-effective and environmentally sound route for their plant.

Many variables affect the methodology adopted for a given site, but organisations’ commitment to EHS excellence often sees decommissioning projects excel in terms of material collection, processing and trade.

A fundamental driver is to reduce the amount of ‘waste’ going to landfill, which of course supports the country’s impending targets and reduces waste disposal costs. Concrete and brick for example can be crushed for use as backfill, road sub-base and levelling.

Elsewhere selected items of plant can be carefully salvaged for reuse. For instance I have overseen the meticulous disassembly of a 500m long, 6,500 tonne papermaking machine that was sold for re-erection overseas. Of course such an exercise is not without its complexities, but a comprehensive grasp of the commercial environment means that plant buyers can regularly be secured and income can be generated for the original asset owners, which contributes to the overall project cost. This is perhaps the ultimate in recycling and waste stream management.

The general recycling of project materials is also very prevalent in industrial demolition due to the commodity value of arisings such as scrap metals for instance. Process vessels are often made from exotic alloys and high-value metallurgy can generate a significant income stream. We have worked on projects in the past where the monies earned from scrap materials have not only covered the cost of the works; they’ve been cash generative for the client.

This is clearly not possible with every project but the sum that can be earned from recycling does frequently determine whether the works go ahead, or not. In every case it is a matter of achieving the ‘best value’ outcome for the client concerned. One customer, a cast iron foundry owner, sought the creation of a precisely-engineered salvaging system to enable the reclamation of timber, plastic and scrap metal and uphold the organisation’s ongoing environmental commitment. The resulting ‘production line’ saw suitable material graded and segregated according to whether it met the appropriate specification and should be retained for reuse on the client’s other sites, or whether it should be sold to the industry via the usual recycling channels in the UK.

The conclusion?

Many would wrongly perceive our industry as a somewhat grubby and unrefined engineering discipline that lacks scientific precision. But the better-informed people become, the more they realise that decommissioning, demolition and dismantling engineers are highly skilled professionals that display an unparalleled commitment to sustainability and environmental excellence. It therefore cannot be disputed that the future of recycling within this arena is bright.”

Share