Tech firm expands with booming energy sector

Omega: Growing shift from natural gas to oil boost for project management firms

By Deon Daugherty, Houston Business Journal, 6 July 2012

Spurred by the same forces that are growing many businesses on the periphery of the oil and gas industry, the Houston office of consulting and project management software company Omega Project Solutions Inc. expects to double its staff within the next 12 months.

This week, the company is completing its move into a larger space to accommodate that growth, said Øyvind Vik, president of the Norwegian company’s U.S. headquarters in Houston.

“The oil and gas industry has been booming, and it’s our primary market target,” Vik said, adding that the industry accounts for about 85 percent of Omega’s work.

Omega has in recent years ranked in the top half of the Houston Business Journal’s largest Houston-area Information Technology Consultants business lists. Currently, Omega is the 13th-largest tech consulting firm in Houston. In 2011, the company also ranked as the 48th-fastest growing technology company in Houston on HBJ’s Fast Tech 50 list.

Omega’s Project Information Management System is used by companies such as Norway-based oil giant Statoil ASA (NYSE: STO) and London’s BP Plc (NYSE: BP), which has its U.S. headquarters in Houston, Vik said. In addition to the software, Omega also provides the experts to implement the technology for optimal project management.

“The thing is, as an oil and gas company, you can have the greatest strategies and the best thoughts, but if you don’t have the organizational capability to get to where you want, it doesn’t do any good,” Vik said. Oil and gas companies are selling commodities, and there’s little they can do to impact those costs, Vik said. Consequently, efficiency and keeping expenses down by even 2 or 3 percent can save companies millions.

Vik explained that one of the legacies of the 2010 Macondo well disaster, in which the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and spilling almost 5 million barrels of oil, is energy producers’ recognition that a lot of work needed to be done in the area of managing changes, documentation and proper records. This shift has also worked in Omega’s favor.

With the January hiring of Mark navbar-brand as vice president for staffing services, plus the addition of three other employees on that side of the business, Omega’s current Houston headcount is 25. During the last 10 years, globally the company has grown about 30 percent per year, every year, Vik said. Growth in the Houston office has been less consistent, he said.

“When you establish a new office, it takes a while to get a real foothold and for people to see the value of what you’re doing. That has taken us some time, but now we feel we’ve reached a good size. We’ve got contracts with major oil companies here, and we’re now ready for a lot of expansion.” The company is moving from its 2,000 square feet of space in west Houston’s Park Ten to a 4,000-square-foot site in the Cobalt Center, a building in west Houston named for its anchor tenant, Cobalt International Energy Inc. (NYSE: CIE). Morris Architects designed the new space, and CBRE Group Inc. (NYSE: CBR) represented Omega in the deal.

Martin Lindenberg, a partner in the Houston office of the executive advising firm Newport Board Group, and a founding member of the Houston Technology Center, said the volatility of the oil and gas industry makes it one that requires solid project management. Movement in the industry provides opportunities for companies like Omega, Lindenberg said. Producers are moving projects from natural gas fields, where commodity prices have dropped to record lows, and instead are focused on liquids-rich fields, which is generating additional project management work.

Also, an expected exodus of many retiring oil and gas executives creates openings for companies to fill with outsourced project managers. Omega appears to have a strong position in this niche market, Lindenberg said. Not only has it developed widely used project management software, Omega can now supply professionals to implement it.

“That appears to be a driver in the way this company has grown,” he said.

Omega AS