This new special interest group is a forum for women engineers, scientists, technologists, and others working in the subsea and wider marine sector to share insights from their experience working in the industry.
More information on this Special Interest Group will be published soon.
If you would like to join this group please contact Cheryl Burgess – [email protected]
The UXO SIG was formed in early 2021 to address issues with UXO in the marine environment particularly in the offshore wind industry. The forum is for professionals from industry, academia and government to discuss and share ideas, technologies, applications, concepts and guidance for dealing with UXO when developing projects.
Initially, the SIG is comprised of individuals with responsibility for UXO matters within offshore windfarm developers. Current membership includes specialists from EDF, Orsted, Tennet, Shell, SSE, Vattenfall, RWE, Energinet, Equinor, Scottish Power, Amprion, BT, Guernsey Electricity, Simply Blue Group, TotalEnergies, Atlantic Shores Wind, Corio Generation, and 50 Hertz. However, it is the intention of the SIG to widen its membership to all stakeholders involved in UXO in the future.
Currently, meetings are held quarterly with the intention of meeting face-to-face twice a year. Meetings involve discussions on a wide range of topics and usually include two or three presentations on topics of interest. In 2024, the UXO SIG is hosting a workshop at Oceanology International at Excel in London which will be open to all. In early 2024, a sub-group of the SIG began to prepare Guidance Notes for Risk Identification and Common Mitigations related to UXO for Offshore Renewable Energy Developments.
Chair: Mick Cook (MCL Consultancy)
Events Secretary: Dorthe Reng Erbs-Hansen
UXO SIG members are required to be individual or corporate members of the SUT. For membership details please consult [email protected]
The MES SIG was set up in early 2021 to provide a forum for professionals from industry, academia, and government to discuss and share ideas, technologies, applications, concepts, and policies for marine environmental science.
Marine Environmental Science is of relevance to a multitude of offshore applications and developments including offshore renewables and hydrocarbon energy resource exploitation, food resources (including aquaculture and wild fisheries), extraction of seafloor minerals, emplacement submarine cables and pipelines and other sub-sea structures, ports and harbours development, defence etc. Members include those working in and/or have qualifications in biological, chemical and physical marine environmental science.
Currently, meetings are held quarterly at which several presentations are provided and topics of interest are discussed. We are planning to hold seminars, workshops, and training events.
Chair: Katie Cross (ERM)
Secretary: Lucy Shuff (RPS)
If you are interested in joining the MES SIG, please contact Secretary Lucy Shuff at [email protected]
MES SIG members are required to be individual or corporate members of the SUT. For membership details please consult [email protected]
You can listen to the Underwater Technology podcast episode below where we speak with Katie, Lucy, and past member Nathan all about the SUT’s Marine Environmental Science Special Interest Group.
Our various branches around the world all offer support for young professionals.
You can find out more from your local branch here:
Perth – YES! (Young Engineers and Scientists)
Houston – Student Chapters, Learning Programmes
| Lochaline Dive Centre/NAS Scotland |
| Nautical Archaeology Society |
| Solent Forum: Historic Heritage and Maritime Archaeology |
| 3H Consulting Ltd (Surveying Techniques for Marine Archaeology) |
| Boston University, Department of Archaeology |
| Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology, Greece |
| Institute of Maritime Archaeological Conservation (IMAC) |
| NAVIS I Database |
| Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project |
| Texas A&M, Institute of Nautical Archaeology |
| Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia |
| Underwater Archaeology in France |
| Underwater Science and Educational Resources, Indiana University |
| Australian Ocean Data Centre |
| British Oceanographic Data Centre |
| Ocean Net, UK Marine Environmental Data Network |
| Oceanographic and Marine Data and Information in Europe (SEA–SEARCH) |
| Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) |
| Challenger Society for Marine Science |
| EuroGOOS |
| Fisheries Research Services |
| Institute of Marine Studies, Plymouth University |
| Inter–Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology |
| Marine Biological Association |
| National Oceanography Centre, Southampton |
| Plymouth Marine Laboratory |
| Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory |
| Scientific Diving Supervisory Committee |
| Scottish Association for Marine Science |
| Sea Mammal Research Unit, Gatty Marine Laboratory |
| University of Newcastle upon Tyne, School of Marine Science and Technology |
| Alfred Wegener Institute Foundation for Polar and Marine Science |
| Australian Institute for Marine Science (AIMS) |
| Caribbean Marine Research Center, Perry Institute |
| Harbour Branch Oceanographic Institute |
| Hatfield Marine Science Center, Oregon State University |
| Hawai’i Undersea Research Laboratory |
| Institute of Marine Biology of Crete |
| Institute of Marine Research, Norway |
| International Council for the Exploration of the Sea |
| Leigh Marine Laboratory, University of Auckland |
| Marine Institute, Ireland |
| Marine Sciences Research Center, Stony Brook University |
| Mid–Atlantic Bight Center of NOAA’s Undersea Research Program |
| National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) |
| NOAA’s Undersea Research Program |
| Netherlands Marine Life Sciences Platform |
| University of Alaska Fairbanks, Institute of Marine Science |
| University of Kiel, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences |
| University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science |
| University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Center for Marine Science |
| Umea University, Umea Marine Sciences Centre |
| University of Texas, Marine Science Institute |
| Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), the College of William and Mary |
| Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Center for Ocean Technology, University of South Florida |
| Curtin University, Centre for Marine Science and Technology, Australia |
| Florida Atlantic University, Advance Marine Systems Laboratory |
| Florida Atlantic University, Department of Ocean Engineering |
| Institute for Marine Acoustics |
| Norwegian Marine Technology Research Institute |
| Ocean Systems Lab, Heriott–Watt University |
| Office of Naval Research |
| U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center |
| British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) Links Directory |
The ability to deploy AUVs to cruise over long distances without mother ship support has major implications for science. Regular cruises are now carried out, seeking knowledge to improve our understanding of global climatology, marine flora and fauna and the geology of, for instance, the mid–ocean ridges and the associated plate tectonics. Because no mother ship is required, research and exploration can also be carried out under the pack ice. There is also much scope for cruises to gather data to currents, seismic activity and seabed geotechnics for the oil industry. This will feed into the design of offshore installations, with particular regard to hydrodynamic loading of deep draught, surface–piercing structures, and the mooring systems they will require.
These results, and others, will also be used by the scientific community to enhance data obtained by scientific AUV cruises.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs – those without umbilicals) are limited in their ability to perform many of the tasks associated with the offshore hydrocarbon industry, because they are heavy and dextrous, and consume significant amounts of power. However, there are tasks while, while not urgently requiring AUV technology, will be undoubtedly be performed in this manner once the techniques are proven.
Such tasks include inspection of submarine pipelines and their associated systems that confirm integrity. Benefits will accrue from the ability to launch vehicles in narrow weather windows that deploy on major tasks unhampered by weather sensitivity. The UK Sector of the North Sea alone is host to some 8000 kilometres of pipeline, so this is no significant task. Similar payloads will be required to conduct route surveys prior to installation of pipelines and submarine cables and before tow–out of structures; once the cost–effectiveness is proven the techniques will surely be used in man parts of the world, especially in deep water.
MILITARY TASKSThe ability to range far and without close support is a value in surveillance applications such as mine countermeasures where AUVs can be dispatched on pre–determined tracks to develop logic and control algorithms to enable the AUV to decide whether to break off from the given task for close investigation and report back before resuming the search pattern. This also has implications for the navigation systems.
Important enabling technologies include:
Navigation (especially inertial navigation systems) and collision avoidance (both the sensors and the logic)
long range acoustic telemetry: low bandwidth for supervisory control of the missions, and a high bandwidth for data transfer to surface (including CCTV)
Power: batteries and fuel cells
Materials: high strength/low density materials, together with novel structural design techniques, to provide great depth capability with minimum weight penalty
Related to remote intervention in inhospitable places — ‘telepresence’
Traditionally, in the realms of both science and engineering, the majority of subsea intervention was performed by divers. Whether the task was the collection of samples or subsea construction, the activities largely mirrored the surface equivalents.
Today, particularly in areas such as marine drilling, there is considerable use of very sophisticated remote control, but this is not robotics, in the sense of the replication of human–like activity. The principal application of robotics in current underwater activity, both engineering and scientific, is the tethered but free–swimming Remotely Operated Vehicle–the ROV.
Today’s typical ‘work class’ ROV for the offshore industry consists of a frame which supports the hydraulic pumps, the thrusters, all ancillary equipment (cameras, sonar, etc) and the electronic control equipment, the mass of which is distributed to achieve balance and whose submerged weight is compensate by syntactic foam buoyancy fitted to the upper part of the frame to achieve neutral buoyancy. It will be fitted with a five–function grabber arm, used to hold the ROV steadily in one position, and a seven–function manipulator which is used to perform robotic tasks.
The manipulator will be a derivation of those found in various industrial applications ashore, having a number of joints, a rotating wrist, and a hand–like claw. For some applications, the ROV will be equipped with a special tooling skid designed to locate and lock on to a docking panel whence various valves and controls can be activated.
The ROV is now used for many tasks in the offshore theatre; drilling support, site survey, debris clearance, structure cleaning and inspection, flowline and umbilical tie in, pipeline inspection, route survey, or override of operational functions. However, the offshore industry is by no means the only place where work class ROV are to be found. They have a significant part to play in mine countermeasures, both for survey routes, and for locate and destroy missions when a suspicious object is identified. They are also used for civil engineering work, such as inspection and maintenance of dams, docks, hydro–electric installations and sewer outfalls, and cleaning the hulls for ships without dry–docking. While some of the ROVs are rather smaller, and another important sector is scientific exploration and marine archaeology (who can forget the amazing pictures from the Titanic).
There are many large steel structures in the North Sea and the waters of the US Gulf, many of which are getting on in years. As a means of maintaining the cost–effectiveness of these assets, their operators are looking for new deposits to exploiting by tying them back to these platforms.
This requires that the integrity of the structures in terms of both corrosion and fatigue is assessed and guaranteed, probably beyond the original design life, and this will require extensive inspection. The detailed inspection of many hundreds of structural nodes, most of which will require cleaning first, is a massive task. It is only really cost effective if it can be automated, and this is likely to be a major application of ROVs in future.
The vehicle technology will not have to improve greatly since they will probably continue to be launched near the site with an umbilical for power, but automation of the applications will continue to advance. Systems are already in the development stage whereby the vehicle will fly to a general location, identify the node it seeks, lock on, learn the geometry, clean and inspect. This will require sophisticated robotic arms, measuring systems employing sonar or laser technology, and solid geometry modelling packages. The ROVs will also be task–programmed: in other words, there will not be a pilot at the controls continuously; the ROV will perform the work with only supervisory control.
The existing ROV technology is already employed for other construction tasks, such as subsea flowline pull–in and connection, or support for underwater cable burial and maintenance operations, as well as the associated survey work, with the former tasks seeing power levels on the vehicles reaching 200hp and beyond. It is also not unusual to see ROVs of 75–100hp being used in drilling support tasks. Drill–cutting removal using high–powered dredges is a common task in this area. ROVs are also deployed to operate subsea equipment which is not directly controlled from the surface (such as cross–over and isolation valves on trees and manifolds) although, in the latter case, parallel developments in the through–water acoustic telemetry may bring much more subsea hardware under direct surface control. This same acoustic telemetry will be used for supervisory control of AUVs
| Ugochituru Akanno | David Fudge | Mark Murawiecki |
| Roy Barton | Richard Gale | Olusegun Ojuekaiye |
| Keith Bentley | Robin Galletti | Simon Plotkin |
| Jonathan Bracher | Phil Hawthorn | Dr Paul Potter |
| Phil Bremner | Mick Hibbert | Mike Theobald |
| Dave Brookes | Mark Hudson | Vahid Walker |
| Guy Cook | Brian Jones | Brian Woodman |
| F J Deegan | Iain Knight | |
| Demetrios Demetriou | Richard Luff | |
| Jose Formigli Filho | Peter Metcalf |
Subsea Engineering Specialisation Application Form
The Subsea Engineering & Operations Technical Group assessment aims to generate and maintain a Register of SUT-accredited Subsea Engineers who are experienced in the design, installation, and operation of equipment, facilities, and systems situated in the vicinity of the seabed. Whilst strongly endorsing the pursuit of Chartered Engineer status, the SUT accepts that there may be suitably experienced candidates who are not chartered, but a recognised engineering degree is usually a prerequisite.
The register is available to the subsea industry with the objective of assisting suitably experienced Subsea Engineers in the progression of their career and assisting the subsea industry in recognising and selecting Subsea Specialist Engineers.
Applicants who wish to be considered for recognition as an SUT accredited Subsea Engineer must be a personal member of the SUT or in the employment of a Corporate SUT Member.
An assessment panel, endorsed by the SUT Council, will scrutinise the applicant’s submission. The panel will meet six–monthly and successful applicants will be placed on the listing and informed by email and letter. Unsuccessful applicants will be informed of the reasons for not qualifying. The Register of SUT-accredited Subsea Engineers will be published on the SUT website.
The register is aimed at subsea engineers with 10 years or more relevant work experience. The following subsea engineering core areas have been identified:
As a minimum, candidates for inclusion on the Register of SUT-accredited Subsea Engineers are expected to demonstrate competence in at least two core areas and awareness in two core areas. There is no expectation that candidates will be able to populate all core areas, but it is expected that the candidate will also demonstrate general experience pertaining to subsea engineering.
The Society will maintain a Register of SUT Accredited Subsea Engineers which will be available to those who engage, employ or otherwise utilise practitioners of this engineering specialisation.
For further information, please contact:
SUT, Nunn Hayward LLP, 2-4 Packhorse Road, Gerrards Cross, SL9 7QE
t: + 44 (0)7947 911992
e [email protected]
SUT is proud to be a partner in the Horizon 2020 BRIDGES programme, for more information see www.bridges-h2020.eu
