Speaking with Energy News, De Silveira said the wider industry had learned a lot from Woodside Petroleum's courageous decision to go it alone and develop the Pluto LNG project in Western Australia's north-west region.

Woodside wanted to see the nuts and bolts, to count the pennies, and develop a robust quality assurance/quality control, system in place that would allow it to work more smartly.

"They recognised that it is all of the small decisions adding up that affect the bottom-line," said De Silveira, who has worked for Chevron and was also rotating commissioning supervisor at WorleyParsons and commissioning supervisor at PTTEP.

In terms of the oil and gas industry, De Silveira said there are really two eras: pre-Pluto and post-Pluto.

"Years ago NDT inspections would be done by a guy with a certificate, and it would really be up to him to pass things based on the mood he was in that day," he said.

"He might decide he didn't want to get in the tanks, but at Pluto, for example, Woodside wanted to see that the work had been done and have the records."

That's where De Silveira, a 20-year industry veteran, really started to see a niche forming in the market, particularly as technology improved.

"You would have 3000 people working there, and with turnover people would go to other projects, and they would want the visual inspection cameras that they had wanted in the previous project," he said.

That's where Nexxis came in.

De Silveira started renting out the equipment, evangelising the benefits of remote RDT, and gradually as companies realised they were ideal for documentation, and could zoom inside a vessel using a camera that can shoot in high definition, it became a service.

Nexxis started as a rental company, primarily to get people interested and comfortable with the emerging technologies, but has since grown to offer an extensive range of instruments and accessories, coupled with a corresponding support package—available for rental to customers with the technical expertise to carry out their own inspections.

De Silveira said trust is the key, so he aims to offer customers a structure that works for them, on short or long-term leases, or rent to buy.

"I openly tell my clients that with short term rental, if you are heavily into that there is something wrong with your business because you don't have the equipment you need on hand," he said.

"It is a trust building process," he said.

"We can tell them where they can save money, what tax benefits they have… and it does from there."

Nexxis was successful enough in its early stages that it was recently able to take its model to GE, and secure sales and distribution in for Australia and New Zealand.

Nexxis' equipment ranges from $30,000 to $100,000 and leaves behind cheap cameras for dead, offering services such as 3D phase measurement, modelling and crack detection.

De Silveira said using cameras for inspection can save 500-600% in terms of time alone, even if there are costs up-front.

New cameras, combined with high definition screens and WiFi, are pushing the boundaries of what's possible, he said.

Image quality really can't get much better, because the files get to cumbersome to send and receive, and there's no real benefit, so GE is looking at enhancing the options for the end user.

GE has recently thrown itself into development new applications, and is "leading the pack", De Silveira said.

With options on its cameras such as 3D phase measurement and connectivity there are massive potential savings.

"If you are sitting offshore, and production is down, everyone is too scared to make a decision because they are not engineers," he explained.

"What you would normally do is ask for a service guy in from Singapore, but it can cost $20,000 just to just get a specialist from, say Rolls Royce, from Karratha to a North West Shelf platform.

"He will fly in at $400 an hour, and he'll need time and accommodation.

"With this technology you don't even need the guy there. You just set your WiFi up, do your borescope inspection on site, and he can be anywhere in the world, looking at this screen, download hi-res images and provide a solution.

"That tech is being developed now, and it is up to the industry to accept it."

The GE agreement provides companies constructing, commissioning or maintaining a large-scale infrastructure project with the latest equipment solutions to perform successfully.

"This increases our products volume, which helps to reduces costs and strengthens our leasing model that is already providing enormous benefits for our clients," he said.

Nexxis also offers training and equipment servicing, and 24/7 support and holds spare stock in case of a breakdown.