NCS Survey to take Delivery of Gavia AUV with New Integrated Sub-Bottom Profiler System

08 April 2011

Teledyne Gavia are to deliver one of the first SBP modules, and the first complete Gavia system to be delivered with a full survey suite of SBP, SSS and Swath Bathymetry, as a part of NCS Survey´s 3rd Gavia vehicle. This makes NCS Survey the largest commercial user of Gavia vehicles with 3 systems being operational after delivery of this vehicle.

NCS Survey's commitment to the Gavia range of AUVs comes on the back of a number of successful contracts for 7 different Oil & Gas clients, including pipeline inspections, seabed scour monitoring, under rig surveys, and site and route surveys.

NCS Survey´s 3rd Gavia vehicle.


In just over two years operations NCS Survey has carried out projects with their AUVs in Argentina, Azerbaijan, The Netherlands, UK & USA demonstrating how portable the systems are.

Andy Gray, NCS Survey's Chief Executive, commented "Our clients and our field staff are all tremendously impressed with the extremely high quality data and the speed with which systems can be mobilised onto a vessel. In many cases we are ready to go an hour after arriving on the vessel. This provides huge cost savings at the same time as improving the standards of the survey results.”

"We are excited by the continued success of NCS Survey and the growth of their Gavia fleet of AUVs. The new sub-bottom profile module will give them the efficiency of full survey capabilities in a man-portable vehicle.” said Teledyne Benthos General Manager, Thomas Altshuler.

NCS Survey has pioneered the use of portable/low logistics AUVs in the offshore Oil & Gas sector and is now recognised as a global leader in this field. The company was formed in 2005 and has grown from 8 employees to over 60 in less than 5 years. Its turnover has doubled in the last year to over £8m. In the 5 years since start-up NCS Survey has performed over 600 Projects in 35 different countries.