News
Highlighting our talent: Colin Peters

What is your role within AIM and what does it involve?

As the Engineering Manager within AIM, my role is to ensure that all engineering works that we undertake are compliant with industry, client, and international standards. My involvement in a project usually starts from the evaluation stage where we would look at potential projects and decide whether they are a fit for AIM and in line with our business strategy, to the proposal stage then through to the engineering design and fabrication phases.

AIM operate as a lean company, meaning that I have been able to utilise various functional areas of expertise I have gained over my career and apply them to this role. I find it is beneficial to have this approach to projects as I am involved at various stages which allows me to be a point of contact, to give clear communications to multi-disciplined teams, external contractors and our client’s representatives.

What is your background and career history?

I am a Chartered Engineer, but I began my working life as Instrument / electrical engineer at BP, Grangemouth. From there, I worked in the offshore oil & gas industry for several major oil companies including Conoco, Occidental and Elf where I was involved in the design, construction, and commissioning phases of new production platforms. Conoco’s being the World’s first tension leg platform (TLP). Occidental / Elf being the redevelopment of the Piper B platform. 

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work on these significant new developments. 

After working offshore for several years, I decided to work overseas and my first opportunity was working in Thailand in the Power Generation industry as an Owner’s Engineer, on Thailand’s first greenfield Independent Power Plant. A 700MW CCGT facility. By this point in my career, I had progressed to a multidisciplinary engineering role rather than focusing solely on instrument / electrical functions. 

I subsequently accepted a role with Chevron, based in Singapore as their engineering manager in their Global Power division. From here, I supported existing assets and led the engineering team on new power plant developments throughout the SE Asian region, culminating in moves to Houston then Jakarta, Indonesia, where I spent a further eight years with Chevron as a project manager on their Geothermal power assets. I was able to lead the engineering development on projects upwards of $500 million, gaining considerable experience in business development, project design and evaluation which I have taken back to AIM when evaluating our business strategies and proposals for our clients.

What are some innovations and challenges the industry is facing, from your perspective?

Regulation and constraints on emissions is something that has been talked about for several years, but we are now finding that these changes are being driven by governments all over the world and the subject is very topical. Carbon (CO2) reduction will require huge investments in innovations from asset owners both for this and the infrastructure that is required to facilitate further electrification of our energy systems. This is not quite there yet in any country. 

Another change in the industry that is being implemented is the trend towards renewable energy. It is still very newsworthy, especially with some governments considering plans to reduce oil & gas exploration activities.  
The best way to mitigate these challenges for any asset owner is to ensure the maintenance package that prolongs lifecycle is working efficiently, meets current regulations and does not bring any negative impact to the environment which at AIM, is always something that is on the forefront of our minds when delivering a project.

If you were a client, why would you choose AIM?

We are a relatively young company, but I believe that what we do, we do well. We are proud of the reputation we have built since our inception and the feedback we get from our clients is excellent, so AIM really want to build on this going forwards. 

Throughout the whole project process, we see the value in clear and open communications with our clients and other key stakeholders, this even trickles down to the way we process and communicate data. It is clear and transparent. 

When I was in client roles myself, I always valued contractors that made working with them, and my life, as simple as possible and I believe at AIM, that is what we do for our clients.