A term which is pretty common in the CRC office and among all our crew is ‘mob’ and ‘demob’. This refers to the mobilisation and demobilisation of a vessel, crew and equipment to and from a particular project and is one of our greatest strengths as we pride ourselves on being able to respond quickly to client requests with all the resources needed.
For a typical charter during the summer we may only have one or two weeks’ notice (and often less!) to get a vessel and crew ready for our client. By this point, charter rates and contracts would have been agreed and a ‘mob/demob’ price determined which usually covers road haulage or vessel fuel to get our vessel to where it’s needed. Our commercial team, consisting of Commercial Managers, Project Managers, Administrative Support Personel and Workshop Crews who will now sit down to meet and allocate tasks to get the operation moving. This includes:
- Booking crew – finding people to drive and operate our vessels. If you want to join the team and sign-up for text alerts for future projects, check out our website!
- Finding accommodation – this could be long term self-catered houses or hotels.
- Booking travel – such as flights and hire cars.
- Machinery servicing – all machinery service schedules are checked and services carried out where needed. If the vessel is likely to be working 24/7 an engine service will usually be done ahead of time by our trusted service engineers.
- Vessel modifications – this is a common request and could involve getting the vessel to the yard for changes such as modifying the push-on bow for a specific wind turbine design.
- Inventory checks – every single item on board from mooring lines and spare engine parts to kettles and laptop chargers are checked to ensure they’re present.
- Certificates – all paperwork is inspected and printed so it can be presented to our client in one simple folder. Some of our larger vessels have nearly 20 certificates such as MCA coding and lifejacket servicing records to IMCA audit reports and stability books.
- A proper full clean! This is self-explanatory of course but it wouldn’t be CRC if our vessels didn’t turn up ready to work in immaculate condition, inside and out.
Once the plan is made and the team briefed we would now be turning to our trusted local hauliers for availability of an HGV. In the past we have transported vessels from the UK south coast to as far as Spain, Germany and Denmark, saving days or even weeks if the journey was made by sea.
Once the vessel and crews have arrived on site and the charter begins, our focus changes to ongoing project support, ensuring our fleet is performing to the high standards we expect. As for demobilisation – it’s usually similar to all of the above again! We always ensure vessels are fully fuelled, cleaned and ready for the next charter as soon as each project has finished.
With a team of over 30 full time employees and 20 years’ experience of providing charter vessels it’s safe to say we are well rehearsed at mobbing our boats. Watch our operations team in action here and read some client testimonials on our website.
