Conference & Events
Subsea Expo’s free-to-attend conference programme brings together industry experts, academics, innovators and leaders with an eye on the future to discuss key talking points in the underwater industry.
The 2024 conference programme opened with a plenary session exploring the event’s theme ‘Navigating the Blue Frontier’, featuring a panel of industry leaders from across the underwater industry. It highlighted international market opportunities, the latest technological developments and cross-sector innovation.
Multiple parallel conference sessions ran over the course of the three days, featuring debate and discussion on a broad range of topics.
The presentations delivered at Subsea Expo 2024 are available below, where permission has been granted to GUH to post them.
The Underwater Digital Revolution
Crossing the Chasm – New Technology and Product Development
Chris Mullen – Kinewell Energy
Market Demand in the Energy Transition
Ross Macdonald & Catherine MacFarlane – S&P Global
Hydrogen & CCUS – Developments towards Net Zero
Nadimul Faisal – Robert Gordon University
Decommissioning and ‘The Circular Economy’
Fraser Pritchard – Smarter Subsea Handling
Surveying the Seabed
Chris Williams – Kraken Robotics
Floating Offshore Wind: Subsea Opportunities
Spotlight on Underwater Pipelines
Richard Stevens – Smarter Subsea Handling
Amund Helvik – Ocean Installer
ROV Technology and Handling
Diversification: Opportunity through Evolution
Chris Wallace & Andrew Douglas – Verlume and Mocean
Integrity and Inspection
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10:00 - 11:30 | Conference Suite 1, First FloorPlenary - Navigating the Blue Frontier
The overall theme for Subsea Expo is ‘Navigating the Blue Frontier’ with a focus on the outlook across the ever-changing underwater market sectors in the Blue Economy.
The opening address will be delivered by Vicky Dawe, Director of Energy Development, UK Government.
During the plenary session, our panel of experts will set the scene for the event by sharing their views, knowledge and expertise on how industry could take advantage and capitalise on the vast opportunities that lie ahead.
The panel of experts will include some great leaders from some of the companies who are pioneering the way forward in innovation and technology in some of these new “Frontiers” including:
– Diversifying your business across the Blue Economy
– ‘Making Humans Aquatic’ in seabed laboratories
– Developing a first-of-its-kind subsea cable project
– Understanding the true value of carbon in the world and how it can be utilised.
The panel includes:
Jenny Shaw CEO, SMI Group
Beena Sharma CEO, CCU International
Sean Wolpert President, DEEP
Ian Douglas CEO, XLCC
Neil Gordon CEO, Global Underwater Hub
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Session Chair
Neil Gordon
Chief Executive, Global Underwater HubBiography
Neil Gordon is chief executive of Global Underwater Hub– an organisation playing a key role in the most far-reaching transformation of the UK energy industry. A seasoned and well-respected industry leader, Neil has more than thirty years’ management experience in director and business development roles including more than two decades working in the subsea industry.
Since his appointment as CEO of Subsea UK in 2011, Neil has played a leading role in discussions with industry stakeholders, Government ministers and departments about the future of the subsea industry and the support required to maintain its world-leading reputation. He’s also played a significant role in leading the transition of the UK subsea industry to become recognised as a stand-alone industry operating in diverse range of sectors including oil and gas, offshore wind, marine renewables, defence, ocean science, subsea mining and aquaculture. In 2021, Neil successfully transformed Subsea UK into Global Underwater Hub, the leading trade and industry development body for the UK’s underwater sectors.
Neil’s early career gained him rich and varied experience in managing and developing business in India, the Middle East and Brazil. A former commercial diver, he went on to become the General Manager of the National Hyperbaric Centre where he developed the business streams, including diving research and trials, hyperbaric testing, and saturation diving operations.
Having held several board positions, Neil is currently a Director of OPITO and the Offshore Training Foundation, and a member of the NSTA Supply Chain and Exports Taskforce as well as DaRT (Decommissioning and Repurposing Taskforce).
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Jenny Shaw
Chief Executive Officer, Scientific Management International LtdBiography
CEO of Scientific Management International (SMI), designers & manufacturers of cable harness systems, Jenny is an engineer with a background in interconnect, she is focused on the long-term commercial needs of the business, entrepreneurial opportunities for growth and developing the SMI team. Her expertise is drawn on by stakeholders across the marine and defence industries.
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Beena Sharma
CEO & Co-Founder, CCU InternationalBiography
Beena is the CEO and Co-Founder of CCU International who provide next generation carbon capture technology to industry emitters. Beena is a multi-award-winner, a founding board member of the Society for Low Carbon Technologies and international board member for CCS Brazil. She has a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), a Postgraduate in Psychology and is a qualified Carbon management specialist.
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Sean Wolpert
President, DEEP -
Ian Douglas
CEO, XLCCBiography
With more than 20 years in leadership positions in the subsea cable industry, Ian has built a number of successful companies, delivering major projects and a range of successful corporate transactions. Ian joins XLCC from Global Marine Group, a leader in the subsea engineering sector, where he was CEO for over a decade. He is experienced in winning and delivering complex, high-value engineering projects across the submarine energy, telecom, and offshore oil and gas industries. In addition to Global Marine, his Board roles have included CWind, HMN Tech, S.B. Submarine Systems and N.T.T World Engineering Marine.
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14:00 - 16:00 | Arena - Orange Conference Room (sponsored by Wood)Market Demand in the Energy Transition
This session will explore in more detail the component markets as part of the energy transition, Oil & Gas, Offshore Wind and Carbon Capture and Storage.
Traditionally, renewable and carbon reducing projects have grown and declined inversely to oil & gas activity whereas now, each market is seeing forecasted growth in parallel with each other. This creates substantial opportunities for companies looking to diversify their offering but does present challenges for supply capacity, where assets can be focused on multiple opportunities and geographies. This session seeks provide a concise ‘scene setting’ for attendees at Subsea Expo by highlight the progress to date in each sector and forecast activity at project and infrastructure level to demonstrate market demand.
Following a high-level overview of multiple markets within the global underwater space, presentations from specialist market intelligence companies will focus on the oil & gas, offshore wind and CCUS markets together with an overview of one of the key leading indicators of market sentiment and demand, the offshore vessel market.
Confirmed speakers are from GUH, Axiom EMI, S&P Global and Westwood Global Energy
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Session Chair
Steve Fernie
Strategic Programme Manager, Global Underwater HubBiography
Steve spent 8 years managing business and intelligence, market analysis, forecasting and strategy for a variety of global businesses units within Subsea 7. In addition to UK conventional subsea operations, his remit covered global ROV and bespoke tooling, subsea decommissioning, early-stage energy transition, automation and digitisation and the associated market-expansion opportunities of these.
Steve’s role as Strategic Programme Manager is to ensure that the intelligence offering of the GUH is value-adding and aligned to the requirements and strategy of members, stakeholders, and the GUH itself in realising the significant opportunities offered by the blue economy.
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Erik Ferdinand Jebsen Vinje
Project Manager, Rystad Energy -
James Hall
Director, Axiom EMI LtdBiography
James co-founded Axiom in 2018 with a refreshed focus is on providing quality research, analysis and insight into the offshore energy and marine sectors. James has 16 years of industry experience with companies such as Wood Mackenzie, Infield Systems & RBC Capital markets.
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CCUS: The reality of the offshore supply chain opportunity
Stuart Leitch
Research Manager New Energies, Westwood Global Energy GroupAbstract
Westwood has evaluated the offshore CCUS project development in the short to medium term to understand the subsea component, platform and rig demand outlook across the globe and quantify the opportunity the CCUS industry presents.
Biography
Stuart is a New Energies Research Manager in Westwood’s Energy Transition team in London, working primarily in the low carbon space. Stuart is a Chartered Member of IChemE and holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester.
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Ross Macdonald
Senior Research Analyst, S&P GlobalBiography
Ross Macdonald is a senior research analyst on the Cost and Supply Chain team at S&P Global Commodity Insights, with a disciplined focus on research and analysis of the subsea construction support vessel and diving support vessel markets. Before joining S&P Global in 2021, Macdonald was general manager of a UK-based subsea market intelligence consultancy and has more than 10 years of experience wo
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Catherine MacFarlane
Construction Vessel Base Manager, S&P Global
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14:00 - 16:00 | Arena - Teal Conference Room (sponsored by IMCA)The Underwater Digital Revolution
The use of digital technology is commonplace in our everyday lives, however, applying digitalisation in the underwater domain is more challenging. Phrases such as digital twins, internet of things and artificial intelligence are widely banded around but have yet to gain a foothold in underwater technology. In the session, speakers will present and discuss their thoughts on the applications for digital technology across the subsea sector.
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Session Chair
Ryan Duff
Print Features Lead, Energy VoiceBiography
Print Features Lead for Energy Voice, Ryan Duff is a Robert Gordon University graduate with a BA Hons in Journalism. Having first joined Energy Voice in the summer of 2022, starting off as a reporter, he soon took over responsibility for the publication’s print edition in September last year.
In addition to his written work, Ryan also hosts the Bridges and Bottlenecks podcast series and regularly appears on Energy Voice Out Loud.
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Facilitating digital delivery and smart subsea data management
Greg Hammond
Digital Lead, UTEC, UTEC NCS Survey LtdAbstract
A new digital solution to manage access, hosting, distribution, and analytics of subsea data. UTEC, a Geo-services brand in Acteon’s Data and Robotics division, has developed “iSite Subsea”, a cloud-based platform giving users an intuitive interactive delivery portal for survey and inspection data, designed specifically to meet the needs of the offshore renewable energy, and oil and gas markets.
Biography
Greg is the Digital Lead for UTEC, a Geo-services brand in Acteon’s Data and Robotics division. Since joining the company in 2005 Greg has been involved in technical, business development and management roles within the Geomatics discipline. Greg’s focus is on the growth of smart data management through cloud-based digital solutions which have been supporting the energy sector for 10+ years.
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Digital Twins: Enabling Lean Electrification Subsea
Alexandre Orth
Head of Subsea Automation Systems, Bosch RexrothAbstract
To scale the energy transition (CCS, H2), the subsea industry is challenged to provide affordable, standardized, and reliable actuation with shorter time-to-market, smaller size, and low power. This presentation shows the application of digital twin onboard a new series of lean all-electric actuators, reducing engineering efforts, but increasing safety & reliability with digital redundancy.
Biography
Dr. Alexandre Orth is responsible for the start-up Subsea Automation Systems at Bosch Rexroth, leading the innovation program related to Sustainable Energy Transition. He is deputy president of the board of Deepsea Mining Alliance (DSMA) and member of international technical and standardization committees; contributing to several publications, books, and patents related to subsea electrification.
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Cathodic Protection Design using Finite Element Analysis
Richard Chippendale
Principal Engineer, Element Digital EngineeringAbstract
In this presentation, we will showcase how Element Digital Engineering employs simulation to optimise the placement of sacrificial anodes to improve cathodic protection of subsea structures. This not only allows for an independent validation step against the DNV-RP-B401 approach, but also for some of the inherent assumptions within this standard to be overcome.
Biography
Dr Richard Chippendale holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southampton. He has 15 years’ experience in FE analysis covering a range of applications from offshore high voltage cables to cathodic protection. Before becoming a Principal Engineer at Element Digital Engineering, he was a technical manager at COMSOL Multiphysics for 5 year.
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AI in the Underwater Domain and Exploiting Development Elsewhere
Eshan Rajabally
Maritime Autonomy Technology Lead, BMTAbstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is demonstrating its worth on niche applications in the underwater and broader maritime sector but trustworthiness remains a key blocker to further adoption. The case is made to build upon AI generic initiatives to tackle this blocker. A few are put forward ranging from underlying principles and practice through to bias mitigation and explainable AI.
Biography
Eshan Rajabally is the Maritime Autonomy Technology Lead at BMT. Here he acts as authority on autonomy enabling technologies, identifying and seeding related BMT consultancy and other service offerings. Eshan is a chartered engineer with over twenty years of experience in research and innovation, technology development, and demonstrator prototyping.
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14:00 - 16:00 | Arena - Blue Conference RoomCrossing the Chasm - New Technology and Product Development
Developing new technologies and commercialising new products is notoriously difficult with notable failure rates across all industries. In this session speakers will present and discuss tools and techniques from their experience that may help organisations successfully navigate common pitfalls.
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Session Chair
Andrew Hodgson OBE
Chairman, Global Underwater HubBiography
Andrew Hodgson leads the board of the Global Underwater Hub as it works across all sectors of the industry, providing underwater companies with the market information, connections, access and specialist expertise they need to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the energy transition and the blue economy. A member of Subsea UK’s board from 2010 to 2017, Mr Hodgson also headed up Subsea North East (England).
He is a recognised strategic business leader, with a reputation for delivery in periods of significant organisational change and brings a wealth of corporate, private and public sector experience to the GUH which will be crucial in this formative period. His career has spanned international technology, engineering and manufacturing, built on a sound financial background. His significant board experience includes nine years as chair and vice-chair of the North East (of England) Local Enterprise Partnership. He has won a number of business accolades, including the Queen’s Award for Industry three times, and was awarded an OBE in 2015 for Services to Manufacturing and the North East of England Economy.
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New Subsea Robotics for Better Operational Results
Mark Collins
Innovation Director, SMD LtdAbstract
Together, we’re developing new frontiers that combine engineering, tech and data. The result is new robotic technologies that offer better operational results even in the harshest environments.
Biography
Mark started his subsea career in sonar and survey systems in the 1990’s, moving on to ROVs systems in 2001. Mark led SMD’s ROV product line for over 20 years and is now responsible for SMD’s Research and Development division.
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The SubSea / Space Nexus - closing the TRL 4-6 Gap. Training, risk & cost reduction.
Richard Tanner
Maritime Sector, Executive Lead, Blue Abyss Global Holding LtdAbstract
The need to reduce the time and risk to market in developing new subsea tech, especially the TRL 4–6 area, whilst not allowing costs to spiral, coupled with reducing the training burden is paramount to success. Can we learn from elsewhere? Where do Astronauts train for Space, underwater! With new extreme TRE center’s to prepare technology and humans for Subsea & Space ops this will become reality
Biography
Richard is a former submariner with 33 years experience in underwater operations and training. Now the Maritime Sector lead for Blue Abyss.
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Trustlink Hybrid – addressing the connectivity challenges of harsh marine environments with limited space
Paul Anthony
Global Business Manager Connectivity, MacArtney UKAbstract
MacArtney proudly introduces the Hybrid connector, a compact addition to our renowned TrustLinkTM Metal Shell series. Meeting customer demands, the Hybrid seamlessly delivers power, data, and communication in one.
The TrustLink Metal Shell (MS) design prioritises reliability in a high-density connector, addressing the challenges of harsh marine environments with limited space.
Biography
As a qualified engineer with 30 years of experience working in industrial markets, including oil and gas and elastomers,
Paul joined MacArtney in December 2021 from Teledyne Marine and in his role is responsible for executing MacArtney’s global connectivity strategy.
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IP & Offshore Wind – How Far Does Your Patent Reach?
Tomas Karger
Partner, Marks & ClerkAbstract
For a UK patent to be infringed, the infringing act must have taken place in the UK. However the installation of wind turbines offshore may not be considered to be within the territorial ambit of the UK Patents Act – an important consideration for all patent holders in the offshore wind industry.
We will explore how to protect subsea innovation so they can be enforced in the UK.
Biography
Tomas is a registered UK Patent Attorney and Canadian Patent Agent. He has significant experience drafting patent applications and obtaining patents, dealing primarily with technologies in energy (oil and gas), wireless power, and telecommunications in North America and Europe.
Tomas frequently works with small and medium sized companies helping them capture and grow their IP. He has worked with
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Enabling resident subsea operations through rechargeable battery energy storage
Chris Wallace
Account Manager (Energy Transition) , VerlumeAbstract
To solve underwater landscape challenges including high underwater environmental monitoring costs, resident AUV charging challenges and increasing carbon emission scrutiny, Verlume has utilised its intelligent energy management and energy storage expertise to develop a rechargeable, compact battery storage solution (Charge) and a standalone charging station (AIRIES).
Biography
Chris Wallace, Account Manager (Energy Transition) at Verlume, boasts 15+ years in the energy sector, specialising in underwater technology for the last decade. Responsible for showcasing Verlume’s advanced offshore intelligent energy management and energy storage solutions, he brings a wealth of experience and a compelling vision to drive the energy transition industry forward.
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Modelling to de-risk your project
Chris Mullen
Senior Engineer, Kinewell EnergyAbstract
The presentation describes why modelling is important and the kinds of questions it can help answer. It outlines three different types of modelling and the types of tools that can be used and gives example applications from Kinewell Energy’s experience.
Biography
Dr Chris Mullen leads development of Kinewell’s KLOC software for optimising IAC layouts (esp. floating wind). Working in energy for 20 years, his skills include software, project management, modelling, consultancy. He gained a PhD in Demand Side Response (technical/commercial aspects) in 2018. He’s previously worked at Siemens Energy, The Sir Joseph Swan Centre and Newcastle University.
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17:30 - 19:00 | The ViewNetworking Drinks Reception
Round off the opening day of Subsea Expo by joining colleagues from across the underwater industry at the free-to-attend Subsea Expo Networking Drinks Reception. Kindly sponsored by Verlume, the reception will be held in The View at P&J Live on Tuesday, 20 February from 17:30 until 19:00. The evening event is an excellent opportunity to network with exhibitors, delegates, sponsors and organisers in a relaxed setting.
To book, please visit the Global Underwater Hub website and secure your free ticket now.