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Decom North Sea (DNS’s) chief executive Brian Nixon was presented with a Significant Achievement Award at the Offshore Achievement Awards.

The Offshore Achievement Awards have a 27-year history of celebrating outstanding success within the UK offshore industry in categories which include safety innovations, new technologies, collaborative working and individual achievement. Mr Nixon’s honour is a special category which recognises his long career and contributions to the energy industry. Previous winners include Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK and Alexander Kemp, professor of petroleum economics at Aberdeen University.

On being presented the honour, Nixon commented: “I’m absolutely thrilled and most grateful to receive this prestigious industry award, which I credit to the entire DNS team. It couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, as I will shortly be ‘decommissioning’ myself and heading into partial retirement. I believe the award recognises not just my efforts, but also those of our members and the quite exceptional team that I have at DNS, and in particular Sarah Hillyear. So I was delighted to accept the award on behalf of the whole DNS team.”

For the past four years, Nixon has led the development of DNS and at the end of last year, he announced his decision to step down to take partial retirement. Now a well-respected industry body, DNS’s 230 members are drawn from operators, major contractors, service specialists and technology developers. It has seen growth in its national and international presence, holding and attending events across the UK and in Norway and the Netherlands, both countries having members on the Board of Directors.

Nixon has encouraged a transparent knowledge share of DNS members and has spearheaded the development of practical tools to benefit the decommissioning industry. These include its 2013 report on the supply chain in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and Accenture, which produced a detailed assessment of the current state of the decommissioning sector. Nixon was also instrumental in DNS’s collaboration with operators, consultants and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to formulate a Standard Decommissioning Programme Template which enables plans to be ratified more quickly, allowing the smooth planning of decommissioning programmes and workloads in years to come.

DNS Chairman Murdo MacIver, Director-Offshore Group for Peterson, said: “Brian is an inspiration to many people and his contribution to the energy industry, and in particular to the decommissioning industry during the past few years, has been of tremendous benefit to the supply chain as a whole. His unique talent for bringing people and organisations together has been instrumental in the development of Decom North Sea and of benefit to many in creating knowledge and an understanding of the decommissioning industry. I am absolutely delighted that Brian has won this award which is very much deserved.”

Nixon continued: “In my retirement I very much look forward to spending more time with my family and friends and doing a little bit of travelling.”