Page 55: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 2014)

www.marinelink.com 55 own brand to new clients in the oil and gas market.

How is Global Diving & Salvaging in- vesting? The largest investment we are making over the course of the next few years is internally with our professional development program. We are focused on our own training center concept, and creating a more well rounded diver and marine technician.

Where do you see the greatest current business challenges? For Global, the greatest chal- lenge is our need to continually adapt to the needs of our clients. Subsea work is continually moving further offshore and deeper. Developing capabilities to respond to those needs, which include unmanned operations. Clients desire for us to take on a greater scope of the over- all operation, so we invest in engineering and project management and evaluation on owning larger marine assets. Internal- ly, we are constantly looking at not only how to develop our professional trade- men, but as importantly, how to develop and retain talent in our support groups. I was fortunate to grow up in an extended family who worked on the water, and it was very natural for me to want to con- tinue that tradition. But as an industry, the maritime community needs to do a better job of marketing the benefi ts and opportunities that are available to younger generations, across the board.

In the press release announcing your appointment, you were quoted as say- ing the company will “continue the transition from a traditional commer- cial diving company into a more well- rounded, marine and subsea service provider.” What are your goals in this area, and what steps are you taking to ensure this? As mentioned briefl y before, we are continually asked to provide more value added services to our his- toric diving and marine environmental services. One very basic lesson that Tim and John taught our senior managers and me is that we have to continually adapt and be responsive to change. Nothing is certain, and you are continually adapting to both the market needs, and aligning those changes with your strengths. Our strength is our innovation, ingenuity, expertise and a fl at out, aggressive, can do attitude. Perhaps even a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. When we are asked to push ourselves, we respond. And that is why we need to move into more turn- key marine and subsea services; we need to move beyond subcontracted diving and marine environmental services, and into a more prime position with end us- ers and facility owners.

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