Case studies / Oil & Gas / Subsea Umbilical Supply
Case Study · Oil & Gas · 2026

Subsea umbilical supply — 3 vendors evaluated in under 5 minutes.

How Gatekeeper identified €110,000 in pricing discrepancies and flagged 2 mandatory compliance failures that manual review would have missed.

Sector Offshore · Subsea
RFP 2026-UMBILICAL-001
Contract €5.1M–€5.8M
Published Q1 2026
Vendors
3 evaluated
OneSubsea · TechnipFMC · Aker Solutions
Bid range
€5.1M–€5.8M
Spread: €700K across 3 proposals
Compliance
2 failures found
API 17E mandatory — automatic DQ
Pricing gap
€110K flagged
Quoted total vs. line-item sum
01 · The challenge

Three proposals. 340 pages. Two weeks.

A North Sea operator needed to evaluate three vendor proposals for a hybrid subsea umbilical supply contract — Aker Solutions, OneSubsea (SLB), and TechnipFMC.

The RFP package specified 2,400m of umbilicals with 24F fibre-optic cores, hydraulic tubes, and electrical conductors, plus delivery DDP Kristiansund. Each proposal arrived as a different mix of PDF, DOCX, and XLSX — with technical data, BOMs, and compliance certificates scattered across annexes.

Manual evaluation would have taken the procurement team 2–3 weeks of spreadsheet cross-referencing, technical review, and clause-by-clause compliance verification. And even then, subtle discrepancies — a line-item total that doesn't sum, an "as applicable" qualifier on a mandatory cert — often slip through.

The real risk Missing a single API 17E non-compliance at evaluation stage means awarding a contract that fails FAT, slipping the project by months, and re-opening procurement at 3× the original cost.
02 · What Gatekeeper found

Three findings. Five minutes. One compliant vendor.

Gatekeeper ingested all three proposal packages and scored them against the RFP's six criteria, extracted every line item, and cross-checked each vendor's compliance annex against the mandatory API/DNV clauses.

Finding 01 · Scoring Only one vendor passed mandatories.
OneSubsea scored 78.5/100 — the only vendor to pass all mandatory compliance requirements. TechnipFMC scored 67.75 but failed on API 17E. Aker Solutions scored 60.25 with two mandatory failures.
TECH HSE DEL PRICE COMM REF
OneSubsea 78.5
TechnipFMC 67.75
Aker 60.25
Finding 02 · Pricing discovery A €110K gap nobody saw.
Gatekeeper automatically detected a €110,000 discrepancy between OneSubsea's quoted total (€5,800,000) and their line-item sum (€5,910,000). Flagged as a pre-award condition requiring resolution before LOI.
LineAmountCheck
Umbilical · 2,400m€4,650,000
Ancillaries · TDU · TH€720,000
FAT · Spares · DDP Kr.€540,000
Σ Line-item sum€5,910,000
⚠ Quoted total€5,800,000−€110K
Finding 03 · Risk flags Two critical compliance gaps.
Aker Solutions — API 17E certification entirely absent (automatic DQ for subsea umbilicals). TechnipFMC — API 17E conditional only, with "as applicable" language failing mandatory compliance.
● CRIT · DISQUALIFY
API 17E certification not present in compliance annex.
Aker
▲ HIGH · FAIL
API 17E marked "as applicable" — fails mandatory clause 4.2.
Technip
▲ HIGH · FAIL
DNV-ST-F119 qualification referenced but not attached.
Aker
03 · The outcome

One compliant vendor. Zero surprises at FAT.

OneSubsea was recommended as the sole compliant vendor at €5,800,000 with a 54-week delivery to Week 46, 2026. The €110,000 pricing discrepancy was resolved pre-award. Two vendors were eliminated on mandatory compliance grounds — failures that would have required weeks of manual cross-referencing to surface.

Evaluation time
2–3w → 5min
From three weeks of spreadsheet review to under five minutes of automated parsing and scoring.
Pricing gap
€110K flagged
Quoted total vs. line-item sum discrepancy caught before Letter of Intent — resolved pre-award.
Compliance
2 DQ caught
Two vendors eliminated on mandatory API 17E / DNV-ST-F119 grounds — no FAT surprises downstream.

[Procurement Lead quote about evaluation accuracy and time savings — pending approval from client legal.]

Name withheld · Procurement Lead · North Sea Operator
Case data based on RFP-2026-UMBILICAL-001

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