There has been some consternation in the local press recently about the contract awarded to Bristow Group by Exxon Mobile to provide support to the drilling platforms offshore Guyana.
With all due respect, the Bristow Group is the premier company in the oil support industry. I was a senior engineer and manager for Bristow (UK) for many years. I represented them in Norway and Nigeria, and on projects from Canada, USA, Australia, Trinidad and a few middle Eastern countries. I was the principal engineer on their Search & Rescue (SAR), HUMS (Health and Usage Monitoring), CAA approvals for US and other worldwide operated helicopters, IFR equipment upgrades and a host of other programs.
In the USA I managed and trained Maryland State police staff to incorporate their 12 Dauphin (AS365N) in service, also U.S. Park Police Bell 412, along with most helicopters in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
With this background and intimate knowledge of systems, processes, procedures and culture behind the operations of highly complex enterprises, I can say without a doubt that Bristow not only has the best maintenance program because of legacy knowledge, but their management, support of personnel and operations, spares, and technical capacity is second to none. In addition, if there were to be an incident requiring the need for search and rescue operations, Bristow has the capability in-house and therefore would be able to respond without delay.
It takes years to establish that scale of capacity and capability, and Bristow has several decades to their credit. I don’t think that there is any Guyanese company with the capabilities or capacity to undertake the task. What can and should be negotiated is for Bristow to assist Guyana in training engineers and capacity building so that Guyanese can become contributors and beneficiaries in supporting Bristow’s operation in Guyana.
