Masters of Complex travel
Standing alone in the Middle of the North Sea, amidst a howling gale and driving rain, a lonely helicopter comes into view, its expert pilots safely bringing their passengers down to a heliport on an oil platform. This – and many other similar journeys – is carried out every day across the world, and it is organised by CWT’s Energy, Resources and Marine, otherwise known as ERM.
“We serve all kinds of businesses, irrespective of size,” says Tony Berry, Vice President Global Programme Management. CWT ERM has been part of CWT for more than 40 years, and in the last ten of those years it has accelerated its growth and its geographic footprint, currently operating from around 150 countries.
ERM facilitates the movement of people on trips within the energy, resources and marine sectors . They can be separated into two distinct sorts of trips: broadly standard “commercial trips” and “logistics trips”.
“On the commercial leg of the journey,” says Berry, “the journey might involve flying on a commercial airliner and staying in a hotel.” So far so normal. The journey gets more interesting, however, when one turns to the logistics trip. A journey might be completed with a “charter plane, a helicopter, private ground transportation, and then staying in accommodation such as on a rig, vessel or in a camp.”
The challenge of this logistics element should not be underestimated, and it speaks volumes about the trust placed in the capability of the CWT ERM team to get people where they need to be, on time, and ready to work – no matter where, no matter how.
Once you leave the commercial travel arena and enter the world of logistics, the nature of travel becomes more “intensive”, explains Berry. It becomes increasingly “bespoke”, he says. This might involve a helicopter trip that takes rotational workers on the final leg of their journeys, delivering them to platforms, rigs or any number of inhospitable locations across the world. “We take people anywhere there is a resource operation,” Berry points out. “That could mean Western Australia, Arctic Canada, the east coast of Africa, Norway, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico – in fact, you’ll find us working anywhere there is exploration and production activity.”
CWT ERM relies on skilled, experienced agents, who have for many years worked alongside companies in the oil, gas, mining, offshore, marine and alternative energy industries across the world. “We understand the complexity of the rotation cycle; we understand the complexity of travel,” says Berry.
This article was written by Paul Wheatley and originally published in Connect Winter 2018.
