On track under water UCI Editor John Bevan visits the headquarters of TSS, the leading supplier of subsea navigation and tracking systems Inside a tastefully refurbished former woollen mill just outside Oxford can be found the headquarters of one of Britain's most successful hi-tech companies. Successful, that is, if you count as a measure of success the expansion of turnover from more than £6m to more than £11m over the last two years, and a predicted increase to £25m over the next three years.      Indeed, TSS is busy recruiting and actively seeking appropriate acquisitions and strategic partnerships right now.      One of the company's more recent acquisitions has been S G Brown, which manufactures gyrocompasses. Through shrewd reinvestment and restructuring, S G Brown products have been turned around and built up into a thriving profit centre in their own right.      Expansion is happening all the time. TSS opened its Houston office in 1995 and its Aberdeen office in 1997, and at the last count staff numbers were up to 80. The company has recently invested in additional equipment and manpower for its Houston base, and in Aberdeen an expanded range of motion sensor calibration facilities has been commissioned.      Meanwhile, back at HQ in Witney, where clattering looms once spun famous Witney blankets, electronics and computer engineers now sit glued to their monitors. Above them, the open-plan first floor accommodates the administration and management personnel. The offices are state-of-the-art. The premises are so stylishly modernised that you could be excused for thinking you were on a James Bond movie set. Joined I was met by Rob Balloch, TSS's Sales and Marketing Director. Rob joined the company back in 1993 when its turnover was a modest £1.5m. He worked closely with the founder of the company, Phil Goymour, who had originally come from Wimpol. When Phil retired in 1998 after selling out to Vosper Thornycroft, he found it expedient to retire to Sydney, Australia, where the tax environment is a little healthier.      As we did the circuit, I enquired why there were so many empty management desks. "They're all out with our customers," was the reply. "David has just gone out to Germany, Simon is in Singapore and Mark is in the USA." TSS clearly believe in the closest of customer support.      So what exactly does TSS do? Quite simply the company is the world leader in subsea inertial navigation systems and cable and pipe tracking. Global It also develops and manufactures most of its own sensors. TSS navigation systems can be found globally on ROVs, AUVs and cable burial machines, and the company's cable and pipe tracking systems are so good that they have captured about 90% of the world market.      Indeed, TSS has just received its biggest-ever single order, worth over $1.75m, when Perry Slingsby Systems ordered seven Dualtrack cable detection systems for its Perry ST200 ROVs, six of which are intended to go to TyComm of the USA. This is on top of an order worth more than £500,000 from Ashtead Technology of Aberdeen for seven second-generation TSS 340 and TSS 350 pipe and cable tracking systems. TSS won the Queen's Award for Export as far back as 1993.      Most of TSS's business (about 65%) is subsea, but the inertial navigation systems find a huge market topside in marine applications.      I was lucky to catch Mike Trethewey, Chief Engineer, at his desk. He patiently explained some of the innards of TSS's miniaturised inertial navigation systems, whose accuracy is now so awesome that the military are getting concerned that TSS are getting seriously close to their own standards. Software The trick, it seems, is largely in TSS's proprietary datafusion software, which optimises the integration and processing of the data from the motion sensors. Their quality control is as good as it can get. They were awarded their BS EN ISO9001 in 1999 and have just passed their two-year audit.      "And how did it all start?" I asked Rob Balloch.      Well, it was one of Phil Goymour's original ideas that launched the company into the big time. He had identified a need in the market for an electronic means of filtering heave from survey data. The idea was simple enough (aren't they all?). By taking an input from a depth sounder, the data could be used to filter out the effect of heave in other surveying systems being used concurrently. This led to the solid-state products called the 316 Heave Filter and the 320 Heave Compensator. Since then, TSS has successfully diversified and has never looked back.      As I have noted often before, companies that flourish in the offshore industry have one thing in common - they are all based on the ingenuity of key individuals who have intimate technical knowledge and a wealth of operational experience in their particular area of expertise. Having successfully identified a niche within which they can apply their specialist skills, they then simply go for it! It is the combination of technical knowledge with operational experience that provides the key to success.      However, in a rapidly evolving industry, operational experience must be constantly updated. And it is one of the strengths of TSS that not only do their engineers come from within the industry, but they also continue to spend much of their time on site with customers to ensure that they remain ahead of the game. Measure It is a measure of TSS's success that the company will take pride of place at the Oceanology International show in the new Excel exhibition centre in London's docklands next year. The company will be the first to greet visitors the moment they walk through the door.      If you want to see the best in the business, you will need to go no further!

© 2001 Underwater World Publications Ltd.