CEO Update – September/October 2022

Welcome to Making Waves. At last, I am able to report that we have held a successful series of face-to-face membership and industry events this year. We started in Aberdeen in February and by the end of next month we will have completed all our regional events together with two technical seminars. Many thanks go to all our members who have taken part and contributed to the success of these events. Thanks also go to the IMCA secretariat and in particular our communications team for getting us quickly back into the swing of being on the road again. 

With the current energy crisis and longer-term transition plans underway there are again many moving parts in our industry and with-it opportunities. IMCA’s strategic theme of expanding our presence in the offshore wind energy industry has been reflected in changes to the composition of our board of directors. Following a governance review, three new directors have joined the board reflecting the changing energy mix: Kate Harvey (General Manager of G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety organisation); Arnoud Kuis (Managing Director of Van Oord Offshore Wind); and Hugo Bouvy (Managing Director of DEME Offshore).  

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Allen Leatt
Chief Executive
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In addition, the secretariat’s focus on offshore wind has been significantly strengthened recently with the support of Rhys Jones and Dustin Varnell. Rhys joins our technical team from RenewableUK where he was Head of Technical Affairs; and Dustin who is a Master Mariner and knows IMCA very well through our DP work, joins our business development team and is based in Rhode Island, USA. We welcome Rhys and Dustin to the team and together I am sure we will be successful in adding tremendous value to the wind sector. 

Our technical programme has made good progress this year with new documents being published and the scheduled revisions taking place. In particular, our Code of Conduct for IMCA Members has been upgraded by our Compliance Workgroup, which is part of our Legal, Contracts, Insurance, and Compliance (LCIC) Committee. The Code has been expanded with more granularity in eight areas and reflect subtle changes in business expectations since the Code was first launched in 2018. 

Our LCIC Committee has also been busy with revising our Contracting Principles for the Renewables Industry. This has been a serious programme of work lasting 18-months and canvassed opinions from a wide range of stakeholders. We all recognise that for the wind energy sector to be sustainable, it needs to be sustainable from a business perspective for the whole supply chain. IMCA will be promoting the newly revised contracting principles widely within industry, regulators, and governments in order to help promote a fairer allocation of risk between developers and the contracting community. 

Finally, on a sad note, I would like to recognise the contribution to our industry by John Baron who died recently. I remember John when he joined Stena Offshore (now TechnipFMC) in the early 1990s. He represented a new breed of project director for a new breed of subsea contractor. He quickly made his mark and was a fantastic mentor and motivator of countless project managers under his tutelage. Please refer to the article by Bob Bryce later in this edition. 

Thank you again for your support and stay safe and stay heathy everyone. 

Allen Leatt 

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