Partrac Group Marks Most Successful Year (UK)

Marine data acquisition and consulting experts the Partrac Group have experienced the busiest and most successful year since operations began in 2003.

The Group, which is headquartered in Glasgow, has attributed the resulting growth to the award of many new contracts and contract extensions, continuous innovation and the streamlining of survey and project management processes, and through the recruitment of high-calibre staff.

Highlights from 2011 include the official launch of Partrac Consulting, a Newcastle-based marine geosciences consultancy specialising in coastal oceanography, coastal sediment transport processes, coastal geomorphology and benthic marine ecology. The consulting team have been busy providing Coastal Processes Impact Assessment for various Scottish Territorial Waters (STW) offshore wind farm developments, as well as providing advice and guidance to several clients on scour processes and scour prevention approaches.

Partrac Ltd has continued to deliver quality oceanographic, geomarine and environmental survey services in support of their client’s project requirements. The past 12 months has seen the marine survey company successfully deploy, service and retrieve metocean equipment in some of the most challenging marine energy sites around the UK. Partrac is delighted to have worked on every Scottish offshore wind farm, numerous English offshore wind farms and has recently won a series of high profile wave and tidal project contracts in the UK and Europe.

Recent developments include the expansion of Partrac’s service offering, in particular its marine benthic survey capability. Partrac’s environmental team completed specialist surveys in 2011, including ground-truthing of geophysical data and sea bed habitat mapping, with the objective of providing high quality environmental baseline data to inform wave and tidal energy site selection.

We completed several vibrocoring projects in 2011 in a number of UK ports and much of our work in the dredging, ports, offshore renewables and marine construction sectors was associated with dredge monitoring and reclamation activities to ensure that environmental licence conditions were adhered to.

Partrac completed particle tracking projects in 2011 for the US Geological Survey in Molokai (Hawaii) and the federal government in Washington State (USA). These projects provided clients with a unique understanding of sediment impacts in coastal environments. We will continue into 2012 to work with Defra on a project designed to reduce soil loss to streams and watercourses, and we will start a two year contract with the US Navy to map the depositional footprints of contaminated sediments.

Dr Kevin Black (Managing Director, Partrac Consulting) demonstrated Partrac’s expertise in particle tracking by presenting on sediment and scour management at several industry events. The Partrac Group was also delighted to host the 49th Marine Measurement Forum at the Glasgow Science Centre in November, which brought together the scientific marine measurement community to explore and share new technologies, project experiences, equipment evolutions and survey processes.

Peter Wilson, Director, Partrac, comments, “We are delighted with the expansion and growth that the Partrac Group has experienced over the past 12 months. We have a healthy pipeline of confirmed projects lined up for  2012 and we will continue to deliver industry leading data acquisition and consulting solutions, enabling our clients to advance their projects with confidence.

We would like to thank all our clients for their continued support and for the opportunity to work on such diverse and interesting projects. We wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year.”

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Offshore WIND staff, December 20, 2011; Image: partrac