Page 21: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2023)

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FEATURE CONNECTIVITY & REMOTE OPERATIONS

Realizing the full value of digital solutions far exceeds the capability of technology. The technology exists today to help offshore energy and maritime operators radically improve efficiency and cut costs in equal measure. The real trick to driving efficiencies is to take advantage of the latest technologies while at the same time negotiating the necessary culture change within individual organizations, to really reap the benefits.

Harvest Technology Group is a relatively young and small

Australian company that has caught the attention of a number of offshore and subsea industry heavyweights, from Fugro to Ocean

Infinity, Technip FMC, and DOF Subsea. Damiain Brown, Chief

Product Officer, and Adam Ford, Special Projects Lead, from

Harvest discuss the potential of technology to make a real difference in the maritime industry with Offshore Engineer.

By Greg Trauthwein orking in the offshore environment is dif- botics and autonomy.” ?cult enough, however poor connectivity Today, by Brown’s estimation, Harvest supports the ma- can increase the dif?culty exponentially. jority of tier-one service providers within the IMR space.

Getting access to increased bandwidth, if “We've recently joined Inmarsat Maritime's initiative as

W possible, comes with increased costs, but what about reli- a certi?ed application provider, so that's giving us access ability? How do you make sure your system is dependable to a signi?cant part of the global maritime and shipping enough to allow the transfer of massive data packets or live sector,” he said.

stream video to solve a technical problem? Harvest says it Harvest has also expanded its partner network which has the answer, or at least part of the answer, to achieving the now includes AST Group and Shamal Technologies in true ef?ciencies and cost savings that come with seamless, Saudi Arabia. fast, and reliable connections from shore to ship or offshore. The company’s investment of about $5 million in R&D

Founded just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandem- alone over the past 12 months is paying off with revenues ic, Harvest has quickly grown its pro?le as a partner to up 42% year on year in 2023. Driving that growth are mul- help enable remote operations. tiple markets, as maritime makes up 10% of its business “Many of the Harvest team began their careers in the (versus only 1% a year ago), with offshore services (36%) offshore and maritime sectors, and Harvest’s core technol- and energy (35%) delivering the bulk of its business today. ogy was born from solving a speci?c set of problems to en- “Our focus on growing our business in the maritime sec- able operational transformation within these sectors,” said tor is a key part of our strategic plan, which we're about

Damiain Brown, Chief Product Of?cer. “In 2018, we set halfway through implementing. The next phase will see us out with a mission to make remote operations possible, further diversify our target markets including defense and with a longer-term view of enabling the path towards ro- uncrewed assets across marine, land, and air,” said Brown.

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