Meet our member: Rob Grimmond, CEO, Offshore Marine Management

Name: Rob Grimmond
Job: CEO
Company: Offshore Marine Management

How long have you worked in renewables?
Over 13 years. We started working on the first wind farms in the UK, and have taken this experience to the German, and soon into the American and French markets. Our offshore service is provided through the project life cycle for FEED study, Site Survey, Installation and operations & maintenance phases of a windfarm.

In ten words or fewer, what does your firm do?
Offshore provision of engineered services, specializing in sub sea cables and Offshore support work during installation phase, whilst also delivering the operations and Maintenance phase.

In which markets do you see the biggest opportunities at present?
The biggest opportunity is within the O&M market space. As we get to understand the improves to installation the O&M sector still suffers from lack of experience or commercial restrictions to operations that don’t allow for improvements. The O&M sector as we move farther offshore will become the success or breaking of the industry.  We need to look at improved solutions to get people on and offshore safely whilst technology will lead the revolution of how we create an efficient and safe cost effective market.

What is the biggest challenge facing wind, and how would you solve it?
The biggest challenge that exists in today market is in technology and how we improve the efficiencies of this market and how we operate in this market offshore. There is a lot of technology that is coming off the drawing boards that is looking for a market place entry that the industry is too busy to notice. Once these innovations enter the market, time and cost savings will become evident. The traditional market players don’t like this innovation as they don’t own it or it will create improved competition and reduce the standard marketing pricing.

The industry needs to create more entry points for technology that we can create a true platform for safe entry to prove such technologies.

What do you enjoy most about working in wind?
The people and the challenge. Over the centuries, Mariners (people whose careers are offshore) don’t like Wind, Wave or Tide, whilst this industry demands that we build in these environments. I love the challenge of working with people to overcome this. The people of the industry are at the start of a new era and one that when working in a team overcomes such challenges.

Why did you originally join A Word About Wind?
The insight to connect the financial market with leading industry players in a way to engage and communicate was innovative and needs strong support. I felt that the message was straight and direct. The opinions were straight, honest and a breath of fresh air to an industry that sometimes gets caught up in the stale air of politics.