Does anyone here work for or have experience with FairfieldNodal? I am wondering what they are like to work for and what the conditions are like on their boats.
I am currently working for FairfieldNodal as an AB on the New Venture! It is a great company to work for! The Party Managers run the show for the most part out here, kinda like a dive vessel. What position will you be hired for and what vessel? If you need any more info feel free to email!
I’m wondering which AB on the New Venture posted prior, it’s very well known how the office treats us. I’d take a guess it’s Lyndal that wrote that but anyway my mother recently passed away and had seen the true colors of the Field Crew Supervisor. Thankfully George Morgel and CGGVeritas stood up for me and I was able to go home and come back w/out my paycheck being cut. In general it’s a good company as far as the vessels go and the people onboard, the vessels are clean and great crew members throughout the fleet…
I would not have expected to get paid for the days I spent away from the boat, even in an emergency. If you were able to get that at all, even after a fight, then that says a lot for the company. Thank you guys for your input. I feel better about the idea of working for them now, I guess I will go ahead and fax my information off when I get home next.
Fairfield doesn’t pay a proper day rate. though. The take a average to low rate cut it in half and tell you that you get paid for time off. But it’s not day for day. It’s salary. So when they have you work extra your pay check doesn’t change. They keep track of how many days you worked extra and at the end of the year you get cut a check for it. Just the days you worked extra, not an extra day off to make it a competitive day rate.
Say your schedule is 28/28 and your ‘day rate’ is $120 (Common day rate there)
You think it’s equivalent to $240/day
But when you actually end up working an average of 32/24
at the end of the year you get paid $120 for each extra day you worked
That reminds me of an AMO tug I was on as a cadet. The engineers (4 on the boat) hated overtime because of how the company decided it. Say, for the sake of math, they made $360 a day, the company said it was $180 a day plus paid time off. So instead of $30 an hour (12 hour days) their overtime was based on $15 an hour. They made less on overtime than on straight time. And the captain wondered why they hated working overtime so much…
You may need a new job after 4 to 5 years. They usually lay people off within that time frame. Even when the Gulf is bumming.
I recently worked on the New Venture in the North Sea. In the short time I was there I heard quite a bit of talk about the company. Everyone believes that for years the fleet was just a tax write-off for Fairfield until they got lucky and came up with a technology that put them at the top of the market and the Data Acquisition (the vessels) began to actually turn a profit. So much that for the first time anyone had heard of, the boat crews got a profit share check.Now, things are headed a new direction. They are adding a boat to the fleet this year creating jobs for four crews and doing work outside the GOM. I was crew changing in Aberdeen, Scotland. By now they should be almost finished there and moving over to Norway. Rumor had that the Venture is on a five year contract and will be spending summers in the North Sea and winters in a list of places like Canary Islands, Indonesia, and Brazil. But you know how rumors go.
Canary Islands! That sounds great!!