Company Viper Innovations

University University of the West of England

KTP Associate Kim Mahoney

Funding Innovate UK

Project Diversification of subsea engineering cabling specialist into new sectors: rail, airports, power and communications.

This established provider of industry-leading products for integrity monitoring of electrical cabling in subsea oil and gas production needed expertise to exploit the potential of its access to spread-spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR), a measurement technique used to identify faults in electrical wiring.

The Challenge: Viper has trademarked CableGuardian™ technology, combining its cable technology insulation monitoring with SSTDR which enables users to monitor, predict and identify the location of faults along cables. To realise its vision of  becoming a global leader in the design and innovation of cable monitoring products (particularly for new sectors beyond oil and gas where the consequences and cost of failure is high e.g. rail, airports, power and communications), Viper needed new knowledge to develop products/services outside the oil and gas sector. This would be critical to the company’s ability to enter new markets.

The solution.

• Through extensive research the KTP project has identified and directed the market opportunities and priorities of the company.
• The KTP programme has been a significant factor in identifying future sales opportunities and markets and also product awareness in those markets.
• The learning and outputs from the KTP have formed the basis in scoping Viper’s diversification strategy for its CableGuardian™ products and services for the next 5 years and the financial impact looks very impressive.

Interested in finding out who wins this category – and all other categories of this year’s KTP Best of the Best Awards? Join us at our immersive Virtual Awards Ceremony on Wednesday 9 September at 4pm. You can register here.