IT Firm Only Scottish Company to Become Accredited Partners

Aberdeen-based IT and Telecoms firm, Escape, has won over £150,000 worth of contracts from North-sea shipping companies and became the only Scottish company trained in a vessel maintenance programme. Escape is the only company in Scotland authorized to install and maintain a type of vessel maintenance software from Satpool called Premaster. By completing an intense training course in Norway, Escape is now only the 2nd in the UK to be an accredited partner of this product.

Robin Parkinson, director, Escape, said: “Our client, Havila, needed a local company to install and maintain Premaster. It is a vital product that looks after the scheduled maintenance of the engine and allows vessels to order everything from food to new pieces of equipment from the head office.

“The software is extremely cost effective as it can run on slow connections – this means the vessels don’t have to invest in high speed satellite connections. As there was only one UK company based in the South of England able to supply and install Premaster, we took part in a specialist training course in Norway to become accredited partners. Now, instead of North-sea vessels previously having to fly engineers on a day rate from England, we are able to carry out the installation and 24/7 on-going maintenance for them instead.”

Escape engineers work to extremely tight deadlines as the vessels are only in Aberdeen harbour once a month for a maximum of 24 hours, often changing arrival and departure times at very short notice. Some vessels also operate Norwegian computers which has resulted in Escape recruiting engineer Reidar Westvik, originally from Norway, to assist all shipping clients.

Escape has also recruited a further 3 Senior Engineers as well as a Business Development Manager. The company provides fixed price IT installation and support services with additional expertise in VOIP phone system solutions and data cabling. It was recently placed 7th in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards – the highest growing IT company in Scotland.