Our experts got a little competitive at our recent pool night! Some of our teams from our Aberdeen based office got together for some friendly competition!

As part of Scottish Apprenticeship Week, North East Scotland College has launched the NESCol Apprentice of the Year awards, sponsored by Moray East Offshore Windfarm.

Rubberatkins own, Alex Charlton, has been shortlisted in the Engineering category for his accomplishments in the field of Mechanical Engineering Maintenance.

Alex joined Rubberatkins in March 2017 under the Adopt an Apprentice scheme and has since excelled in his learning journey. Stand Walker, Rubberatkins Maintenance Manager, has nothing but compliments to say about our nominee:

‘Alex is one of those people who pick up skills quickly and works very well with others. All of my maintenance engineers are expected to learn a variety of skills and Alex excels in anything he does from welding and fabricating to electrical and PPM systems. He is a gem and we are lucky to have him.’

Whatever happens on the awards night, to us, you are a true winner Alex. Thank you for your hard work.

Saturday 4th August saw a Rubberatkins team of foolhardy “athletes” take on the daunting challenge on the Beach Ballistic OCR event, a gruelling 16K obstacle course along Balmedie beach. Involving climbing sand dunes the size of Ben Nevis with sandbags and kegs, wading through the icy north sea and clambering with ropes and nets over various contraptions, it was not for the faint-hearted or faint legged. The team crossed the finish line in less than 4 hours, which we thought was respectable if not record-breaking. 4 days later and we have almost fully recovered. We raised a fantastic £780.63 for Kidney Kids Scotland through sponsorship and a bake sale.

Great article in today's Press and Journal highlighting some major milestones in our recent development and calling driven candidates to join our forces.

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/176022/rubberatkins-to-hire-12-in-aberdeen-as-expansion-drive-kicks-into-gear/

On Wednesday 27th June Bridge of Don Academy hosted its first ever Summer Festival which incorporated sports day events along with inter-house competitions.

Rubberatkins donated the house banners and rock climbing wall for the students to enjoy during their activities.

It was also a great pleasure to meet Jackie Lockhart, Scottish, world and Olympic Curler who opened the summer festival and presented a number of medals.

Great event BODA. We would like to wish all of the students happy and safe summer holidays.

Rubberatkins once again was a key supporter of an Annual Charity Golf Outing. The event is a fantastic one, featuring 28 teams aiming to raise thousands of dollars for the Texas Children’s Hospital. Our support this year, just like others, came in the form of not only entering a team but also by sponsoring the event.

After a gruelling selection process we whittled the numbers down from 4 players to........ 4 players. Team Captain was Alistair. Ably assisting him was Nick, Danny and Cary. With little to no recent play under our belts team RA arrived a little rusty to say the least but nothing a few practice balls at the venues (all water) practice range wouldn’t fix, right? Well wrong as it turns out. Maybe practicing hitting balls into water isn’t such a great idea. We’ll blame that.

Anyway we completed the 18 holes in a very respectable level par 71. Sounds pretty good right? Well turns out for a Texas Scramble playing against a bunch of Texans, level par is very average. 51 shots was the winning score, 20 under par! Highlights for the Rubberatkins team included two lengthy birdie putts, one for Nick and one for Cary, two lengthy beverage stops, and of course our team kit which received plenty of attention.

We will return next year a more impressive outfit, even if that does just mean the team kit.

This week we attended Bridge of Don Academy careers / parents evening. Rubberatkins had a stall in the event and also completed presentations to parents and pupils. Stuart and Himanshu from our R&D team presented their career journey as engineers providing background information on how they got where they are and what studies they complete over the years.

We look forward to the next open evening at the academy.

On the 16th of February Rubberatkins took part in Business 5’s football tournament at Strikers.

The tournament was organised alongside the Aberdeen and Grampian chamber of commerce to help bring local companies together and raise money for Charity.

Team Rubberatkins was represented by Matthew and Ryan (R&D); Andy (GM); Mark and Greg (Sales); John, Steven and Ross (Production) and Alex (Maintenance).

Having exceeded all expectations, our team reached the final of the Europa league, only losing 1-0. As a result we qualified for the National finals which were held in Glasgow on the 14th of March.

On this ocassion we have reached the quarter finals of the Europa League (still not too shabby).

Our players would like to say thank you for the charity donations and the support received from everyone at Rubberatkins and beyond.We have managed to collect £740 for Kidney Kids Scotland !!!

A special thank you to our owners Jill and Nick who very generously paid the entry fee for both the Aberdeen and Glasgow tournaments and doubled the money raised for charity.

Have a happy and safe Christmas and New Year. From our family to yours.

Team Rubberatkins

We started our Christmas celebrations early this December with a party of epic proportions in Aberdeen’s Rox Hotel. Our US based colleagues, joined by our directors Nick and Jil, had their fabulous party a week later. As our Houston 'correspondent' Lisa reports-‘We started out with a White Elephant gift exchange at the Westin Hotel bar, which provided a lot of laughs! We followed the gift exchange up with a nice Italian meal at Grotto Ristorante, and then headed over to Baker Street Pub at The Waterway for dancing and more fun. It was truly a night of merriment, and I think we are all looking forward to the next one!’. Aren’t we all Lisa?! smile

In between Halloween and Guy Fawkes celebrations we decided to indulge ourselves in some homemade cakes. As always our Rubberatkins Star Bakers outdone themselves and our November Bake Sale was yet another success.

£151.86 raised by the employees was doubled by Nick and Jill (company owners). The overall £343.72 was donated to the Kidney Kids Scotland who provide hospital and home dialysis equipment and support for children in Scotland with renal disease. Rubi Paice, daughter of our colleague Taran has a chronic kidney condition and in the future will be one of their beneficiaries. If you would like to follow Rubi’s FSGS journey please click on the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/RubiVsFSGS/

24th October 2017

HURRICANE HARVEY THE HORRIBLE

As you’ve probably heard, the Texas coast was hit hard by a Category 4 hurricane called Harvey on the 25th of August. Harvey made landfall in Rockport, Texas, a small coastal city that is a popular tourist destination. Sadly, much of Rockport is heavily damaged now as the winds blew in at 130mph and destroyed much of the area.

Harvey then moved north, stopping by my hometown where he continued to wreak havoc with strong winds and rain. The areas that were hit were left without power and were also under a mandatory water boil for days after the storm passed. Being that Texas is known for heat and humidity, I can imagine it was a trying time to say the least.

The thing with this storm that made it so detrimental was the fact that it was a slow-moving hurricane, and the rain seemed to go on forever as it passed over Houston. The flooding was astronomical with a recorded 51.88 inches of rain, which if I have done my research correctly, is not quite twice the average yearly rainfall in Aberdeen. This was a new record for rain totals from one storm in the U.S. Luckily, all of us in the Houston office got through without any loss. Mark and Jo (our UK colleagues who moved to Houston) almost had water in their home, but it stopped short of flooding them. Our team was also lucky in that we never lost power or had to worry about our drinking water, but so many other people did not share in our luck. The damage was unbelievable and there are many people who have lost their homes, belongings and sadly some their lives. It will take a great while for those affected to recover from this storm financially, and I am sure emotionally as well.

Here are some facts which give perspective about Hurricane Harvey:

1. Harvey was the first Category 4 hurricane to hit Texas since Hurricane Carla in 1961.

2. Nederland, Texas had the most rainfall with an incredible 60.58 inches within a nine-day span.

3. Harvey left 200 million yards of debris which will take a long time to clean up.

4. The estimate of the damage left after Harvey is $180 billion USD!

End of summer was celebrated with a Rubberatkins Family Barbecue held on the 2nd of September on the greens of Aberdeen’s Bridge of Don.

Private event put together for Rubberatkins employees involved a street food pop-up, face painter and some spectacular inflatable structures to keep the youngest participants entertained.

Burgers, roasted chicken, beer, board games and football kept everyone smiling for the afternoon. We were lucky enough to have some fantastic sunny weather.

We are all already looking forward to next year’s event!

Here at Rubberatkins we like to work hard and play hard. In line with this motto, during one rainy Saturday we decided to organise a staff pool tournament. A fun events designed to cater to all standards of play took place in Rileys, Aberdeen.

Several teams of two fought hard to win the ‘trophy’ but at the end it was all down to those 4 men-Stuart Morrison, Gary Chung, Nick Atkins and John Telfer playing one of the toughest final games ever.

Congratulations to Gary and Stuart for claiming the victory.

Baker Hughes 10k- Aberdeen's biggest running event has just completed its 30th year, with more than 3,000 entrants running through the streets. Amongst them was our colleague Krishna, R&D Engineer during the day and keen runner in his spare time. Here is what he had to say about his experience:

‘About 2 months before the Baker 10K was due to start, I signed up with a new goal in mind: I wanted to beat my old personal best of 56 minutes. While doing it I also wanted to raise money for a local charity. This way I would always be driven to practice and finish the event and help the community in a small way. Aberdeen Cyrenians do great work in helping homeless people and in providing counselling and support to those facing domestic violence. I have previously seen their work and so decided to run on their behalf and raise money for them. Thanks to everyone’s support, we exceeded the target and raised over £100 from small donations made by my colleagues at Rubberatkins. The charity raised over £1000 from this event alone.

I completed the race in about 54 minutes but in my mind I was really aiming for 50. I aim to break the 50 minute barrier next year. All the practice for the event helped me get fit and enjoy the Aberdeen’s weather-which has been great overall this year! I also got to see some beautiful areas while running at the Bridge of Don and nearby areas which I wouldn’t have otherwise. I have also realised how much time there is after work to do extracurricular activities so I am now spending less time in front of the TV and more outside. I organise badminton every week on Monday evenings for our company and anyone interested is welcome to join us. We meet at the Club just around the corner from work so no excuses guys!’