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Feature

Autonomous Vessels ity, around what it will actually feel like to work in this just one aspect: the cost of lobbying and liaising with law-

RCC and who would actually be best to employ: “While makers in individual maritime territories. Often, even still, we obviously need people with certain competencies and when we want to perform a remote-controlled vessel oper- in many cases seagoing quali? cations to meet our legal ob- ation, the relevant maritime authority has no framework in ligations, nobody has built anything like this before, so it’s place with which to advise us or give the go-ahead. Some- not like we can take a look at what everyone else is doing. times, regrettably it’s just easier for them to say ‘no’. We “Do we employ young gamers with peerless ability to have a team here whose main remit is to monitor develop- evaluate multiple streams of information coming from ments, take part in the highest-level discussions and gener- multiple screens at the same time? Or do we go for huge ally, wherever possible ‘be in the room’ when discussions sea-time and experience as our ? rst requisite? Industries around maritime remote control, robotics and autonomy such as air traf? c control recruit to a very tight set of pa- are taking place. The second company to follow us into rameters and consequently have a very high rejection rate; this space will be knocking on considerably fewer closed but they have been recruiting for long enough to have a doors but they won’t have our ? rst to market status.” very clear idea of who they want and require a narrower set of skills. Common sense dictates that we’ll start with a Build program mix of all sorts of skill sets and backgrounds, and operating The company worked out recently that it had over a worldwide as we will from the start, diversity in all aspects kilometer’s worth of vessels at its disposal, working in a from gender, to age to ethnicity will matter more to us diverse range of industries from oil and gas to marine re- than most other employers.” newables, defense and interconnectors. At the moment,

The discussions still taking place about staf? ng, just a the company is already conducting fully manned activities few months before ‘go live’ tell a larger story; one about including survey and deepwater search, often deploying a the costs of being the ? rst in not just new technologies, ? eet of Kongsberg Hugin vehicles from chartered vessels, but in many respects building a whole new industry. As that will be replaced in the next year by the newbuild-

Hook continued, “Being ? rst to a market like this is a fairly ing Ocean In? nity Armada ? eet. Of these 78-meter lean high risk, but potentially high reward strategy. Consider crewed vessels, built by VARD in Vietnam, two have been 24 | MN June 2023

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