Page 16: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2011)

Please provide a brief overview of your company. Kevin Taylor, Forum Energy Technologies Forum Energy Technologies was formed in August of 2010 to create a significant, broad based supplier of products and services to the energy industry. Forum employs 2200 employees in countries around the world. We are located in most of the areas that are strategic to energy exploration and production. This includes North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. More than 60% of our sales are out- side the United States and 40% are directly related to offshore activity. To ensure better alignment with cus- tomer interests, we now operate the business in two distinct segments,Drilling, Downhole, & Subsea? and Production & Infrastructure.? The subsea segment of the businessincludes two strong global brands ? Perry Slingsby Systems and Sub- Atlantic, both of which provide Forum with a wide range of electric and hydraulic ROVs and associated tooling and equipment. Pierre Emmanuel Gaillard, Director of Montpellier Department, ECA Group The ECA group is specialized in design, manufacture and commercial- ization of robotic systems, simulators and control command systems since its creation in 1936. End of 2010, the group consisted of 12 affiliates, eight of them outside France, and realized a turnover of 116.7m (34% export) with the following repartition: Defense (53%) & Civil (47%). The ECA group counts 600 employees as of today. Its activities in France are gathered under the company name ECA Robotics International Activities: The groups solutions and products are commercialized all over the world (34% of the turnover) via our network of agents and distribu- tors and local establishments to pro- vide technical assistance to our cus-tomers. The Montpellier department designs and builds equipment forremotely controlled interventions in hostile environment, it commercial- izes its products under the trademark ECA HYTECTM. How did you come to be involved inthe business of Work Class ROVs? Gaillard, ECA Group Since 1981, we, at ECA Montpellier, have designed and built Underwater Remote Controlled Vehicles; we start- ed with inspection ROVs, with as early as in 1985, the 6000m depthrated Robin which inspected the Titanic wreck from the Ifremer manned submarine Nautile. Our cur- rent 300m H300 inspection ROV is being sold worldwide. The move from inspection to work class ROV has been just natural, and has beenprompted by a tender in 2003 from the French Navy, which we won with our 1000m work class ROV, operated since 2005. And we recently won another tender from the French Navy for a 2000m depth rated ROV; our H2000 will be delivered in Spring 12.Taylor, Forum Perry Slingsby Systems work class ROVs evolved from the efforts of two early pioneers in the aviation and engineeringindustries: John Perry and Fred Slingsby. Each began successful for- ward-looking businesses that eventu- ally combined to form Perry Slingsby Systems. Operating in 1956 as Perry Submarine Builders,? Perry was designing and building one-atmos-phere submarines for military and oil and gas clients. Called Cubmarines,? one of the subs was used in the 1966search for the lost H-bomb off the coast of Spain. Later, John Perry working with Edwin Link (designer of the Link trainer for WWII pilots) built the worlds first diver lock-out submarine. work class rovs Work Class ROVs Last month MTR caught up with a pair of Workclass ROV leaders ? Kevin Taylor, Forum Energy Technologies & Pierre Emmanuel Gaillard, ECA Montpellier & Mark Collins, ROV Business Stream Manager, SMD ? to discuss technicaltrends that will drive this dynamic business in the near term. 16MTRJuly/August 2011