Page 44: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2022)

INTERVIEW RICHARD BOURQUE, COO, C-I “We looked at the downturn as an opportunity for us to grow, and during that time we started our survey services, we started our pipeline remediation services, we started IMR work, and we started well intervention work.”

Richard Bourque,

COO, C-Innovation in the program, too. “They built them, but once we had a few ways to deploy itself anew. years under our belt of actually putting them into service, we “We looked at the downturn as an opportunity for us to grow, knew a lot more about what they could do and what kind of and during that time we started our survey services, we start- adjustments could be made to make them better.” ed our pipeline remediation services, we started IMR work, and we started well intervention work,” said Bourque. “We

Survival is a Marathon, not a Sprint acquired a subsea engineering company, and in short we did

Any growth story in any industry is impressive, but with C-I everything to build ourselves bigger and better.” steadily growing in the offshore energy sector – one of the most volatile industries around – serves as a testament to solid Adding AUVs to the Mix corporate planning and guidance. With the price of oil booming again premised on strong “We’re a small, privately owned organization, and we have global demand following two years of COVID lockdowns and a small team of really smart people,” said Bourque. “I think more recently, geopolitical imbalance following Russia’s in- what makes us good, and what makes us constantly expand, is vasion of Ukraine, Bourque sees plenty of opportunity ahead, that we move quickly. We’re not burdened with heading in a particularly in its well intervention service and growth overall speci? c direction; we react to client’s requirements. We look internationally, particularly in Guyana and Brazil. to the areas in the market that we could make better, as op- Most recently C-I expanded with an offering of AUVs fol- posed to just trying to get bigger doing the same thing. We try lowing a request from the market. “Kind of like we did with to advance ourselves by doing different things.” Schilling on ROVs, we’re standardizing on Kongsberg for

In 2014/2015, when the oil and gas market started its steep AUVs,” and today C-I runs Kongsberg Hugin AUVs, two and prolonged slump, the C-I team was driven by market con- 4500-meter units and two 6,000-meter units, with “an addi- ditions to adjust the way in which it earned money. tional whole Hugin or two in spare parts” to keep C-I’s 24/7 “(The downturn) hit fast, but we didn’t want to stagnate, we operational philosophy a reality.

didn’t want to merge, we had no desire to do anything besides While the AUV ? eet represents a sizable investment, Bourque control our destiny,” said Bourque. So C-I took inventory of doesn’t see the ? eet or its capabilities growing rapidly in the fu- its people, it’s experience and its equipment and found new ture, unless strong client demand or market conditions dictate.

44 July/August 2022

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