IMCA Events Round-Up

Throughout November and December we ran a series of successful webinars, connecting with our members on a range of topical issues through five regional webinars and a technical webinar hosted by IMCA’s Marine Renewable Energy Committee, on “Health & Safety – Our industry’s priority” within the renewables sector.

The event saw Trevor Johnson from the UK HSE, Christy Lan from BSEE in the USA, Kate Harvey of G+ and IMCA’s Chief Executive Allen Leatt and Technical Adviser Nick Hough provide insightful and informative presentations on how health and safety regulations are pivotal to the offshore activities and the importance of sharing lessons learned. Trevor emphasised the need for health and safety regulations not be seen as an expense, but more of an investment in the duty of care to workers and how vital it is to be at the centre of all major decision making. Christy highlighted the work BSEE carry out with their programs to promote and ensure safety on offshore wind facilities as well as the performance-based approach to regulating health and safety with a full circle model to continuous improvement. Kate Harvey used their 2019 safety highlights which saw one injured person every three days, and one dropped object every four to show that there is still work to be done. Allen Leatt opened the session by telling attendees that Safety lies at the heart of IMCA’s work and has done so since 1972. He stated “Through our Marine Renewable Energy Committee, we aim to share and promote relevant experience and best practice between the oil and gas and renewable energy sectors for the benefit of our Members and industry stakeholders”. Nick Hough concluded with a presentation highlighting the importance of IMCA’s Safety Flashes and DP bulletins to the offshore energy industry.

The webinar was hosted by Committee Chairman Alan Macleay and Vice Chairman Steven Myers who lead the Q&A session.

A busy schedule of regional webinars saw each of IMCA’s Regional Committees provide Members with a variety of guest speakers for each region delivering interesting presentations on a wide range of themes. Webinars enable us to maintain the dialogue and momentum with our members with the continuing global pandemic affecting our ability to host in-person meetings.

Middle East & India Webinar: The focus of the event in late November saw the issue of crew changes in the region during COVID-19 bought to light with presentations from IMCA’s Margaret Fitzgerald (Head of Policy and Regulatory Affairs) who explored IMCA’s influence on IMO to assist with the challenges of crew changes, Bryan McGlinchy (IMCA Diving Manager) providing a Diving Supervisor CPD update, Nadine Robinson (IMCA Technical Adviser – Environmental Sustainability) focused on how environmental sustainability fits in with IMCA’s objectives and Nick Hough concluded with an update on the latest Safety Flashes. The webinar also included a short Corporate Update from Chief Executive Allen Leatt and a live demonstration from Darren Brunton and the team at KBA showcasing their virtual training suite in a short session focusing on “Training without borders”. The webinar presented an ideal opportunity to announce a new committee member as Jason Standing from ADNOC recently joined the regional committee.

South America Webinar: IMCA’s South America Committee hosted guest speakers Rogério Carvalho (Fugro Country Manager) and José Formigli (former Petrobras Exploration and Production Director) who followed Allen Leatt, IMCA’s Chief Executive, after giving an IMCA update and insight into the energy transition, in discussing “The future of the Brazilian Market” with regional Members. José spoke from the perspective of an energy company’s view of the market place whilst Rogério followed up with a contrasting view of that of a contractor’s viewpoint.

Thanks go to Regional Committee for their involvement in putting the webinar together and special thanks go to Chair John Chatten and Vice Chair Daniel Marins who acted as moderators on the day.

Europe & Africa Webinar: The Committee hosted two separate webinars in December covering two hot topics in the industry at present; “Vessel compliance in the current and post COVID-19 world” and “The effect of energy transition on vessels”. Committee member, Eva Peño from Bureau Veritas, spoke at both events with key note presentations that captured the topics in great detail. The first webinar included presenters from Bahamas Marine Authority, discussing compliance from a flag state view, TechnipFMC and finally, Olav Eftedal, Equinor’s Lead Physician, provided a view on the operator perspective of when the pandemic may be coming to an end. The second of the Committee webinars bought into focus a series of energy specific presentations from ammonia and battery power to hydrogen fuel cells. Representatives from Alfa Laval, Sterling SPBES and Ulstein debated the future of vessel fuels in an engaging end of event Q&A session.

North America Webinar: The webinar addressed the most popular topics from a survey of North America members in July and also updated attendees on other highly relevant topics to our North American membership. The event provided an opportunity for Members to hear from two highly experienced presenters; John Hensley from the American Wind Energy Association who provided a forecast of the upcoming wind farm projects off the US East Coast and Bob Kingdom, Senior Project Manager, from Hughes Subsea Services, with an insight into his experiences over the past fifteen years in the evolution of the offshore windfarm construction industry.
The new regional committee Chair, Allan Palmer of Aqueos and new Vice Chair, Scott Coughlan of Subsea 7 were heavily involved in establishing the programme and participated in the webinar. Allan took the opportunity to thank Blaine Thibodeaux of Fugro for his long standing support as regional Chairman.

Asia-Pacific Webinar: The final IMCA webinar of 2020 welcomed Paul Seaton, Asia-Pacific Regional Director from Fugro and Lakshmi Narayanan, Engineering Manager from Heerema, as guest presenters alongside IMCA’s Bryan McGlinchy who spoke on IMCA’s Diving Supervisors CPD and key Diving Guidance updates and Nick Hough presented findings from the latest IMCA Safety Flashes. Thanks go to the regional committee for engaging our guests speakers – Paul Seaton’s presentation focused on Fugro’s support of The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project whilst Lakshmi Narayanan explained how quad lift technology solutions for offshore projects need to be more efficient and cost-effective than every before.

Visit our events section to view the recordings or presentations from these webinars.

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