RPS Welcomes EHI to the Group

EHI has offices based in Seattle (Washington), Houston (Texas), Vicksburg (Mississippi), and Charleston (South Carolina). It provides oceanographic consulting and marine environmental measurement services, as well as carrying out environmental and coastal process studies and assisting clients with offshore environmental compliance.  It has similar technical capabilities and experience as MetOcean Engineers Pty Ltd (MetOcean), the business RPS acquired in August 2007, based in Perth, Western Australia.

The company provides professional services for marine projects to a wide range of clients including major oil companies, global contractors, engineering and environmental firms, meteorological and oceanographic equipment manufacturers, government agencies and leading research institutions.

Founded in 1971, EHI supports client operations across the east, gulf, and west coasts of the US and Alaska, as well as across the Americas, and is increasingly expanding its international reach –working in a wide variety of environmental climates. EHI specializes in delivering physical oceanography and applied marine instrumentation services –including advice, installation and maintenance of equipment, and conducting and managing meteorological condition research and environmental studies.

Past projects have included extensive measurement programs in deepwater for the oil and gas industry, including realtime measurement systems on offshore drillships and platforms, and deepwater moorings at future production locations. Coastal measurement and consulting projects have included numerous current, wave, water quality, and sediment transport studies for a wide variety of clients, including for LNG terminal sites, as well as for many industrial and municipal dischargers. Other projects have included upgrade and maintenance of NOAA’s west coast tide gauges network, and the collection of new current measurements in Alaska and Hawaii to permit updating NOAA’s Tidal Prediction Tables. Measurement studies have been carried out throughout the US to measure and assess the impacts of facilities or harbour expansions on nearby marine and freshwater water bodies. Such studies include assessment of wave and current conditions for engineering design and facility operating conditions, as well as environmental impacts to water quality and sediment transport.

Other projects include dredging and sediment movement studies in Brunswick Harbor (Georgia), a wave and sediment movement study at the mouth of the Columbia River (Oregon) –where the shallow waters are belied by a powerful undertow; a tracer study to examine rapid sediment accumulation in the Atchafalaya Channel in Louisiana; and monitoring of current, wind and water properties including directional wave data over a one-year period to inform a shoreline change model for Chesapeake Bay (Virginia).

As a result of the number of severe global weather events in recent years, understanding and predicting oceanic conditions in respect of wind, waves, tides and currents is becoming increasingly valued by businesses with an interest in coastal assets, such as ports, harbours, LNG installations and offshore renewable energy facilities.  Those who explore for oil and gas and transport these products along with minerals and other industrial raw materials by ship also have an increasing interest in such information.  MetOcean has benefited significantly from such trends since joining RPS.  We envisage EHI doing the same, particularly when deep water drilling resumes in the Gulf of Mexico.