Meet Robert!
Our new Senior Design and Development Engineer.
What is your background/career history prior to joining Sentinel Subsea?
- Coming from a welding and fabrication background within the manufacturing industry, I’ve spent over 20 years in this field and have also spent time as a service technician for a well-known onsite hydraulic service company. In 2010, I moved into engineering and design and in 2012, I made the move from my home town in Fife to Aberdeenshire so I could join UCS Ltd (Underwater Cutting Solutions) as a Design Engineer, creating subsea tooling and solutions. I worked my way up through the company to Engineering Manager and in 2019, following the company’s procurement by Ashtead Technology, I served as a Lead Design Engineer before joining Sentinel in 2022.
What inspired you to join Sentinel?
- Sentinel’s mission is one that I found incredibly inspiring and innovative, particularly now in a period of transition where we’re all conscious of our impact and working towards decarbonising the industry. In my previous roles, I was looking for a new challenge and Sentinel’s technology is something I had never come across before. Developing a technology with the use of remotely monitoring subsea assets for over 10 years and being able to detect a range of LoC (loss of containment) was intriguing to me and inspired me to embark on this new path in my career.
Can you give an insight into your working day?
- The normal working day in Sentinel requires you to be very versatile but is very rewarding. No day is the same at Sentinel. Some of the tasks comprise of 3D modelling, engineering drawing, Finite Element Analysis (FEA), compiling various reports and documentation, along with workshop builds, site visits and testing of equipment.
In what ways are you passionate about Sentinel’s mission to support a sustainable future?
- What Sentinel do is ground-breaking. Being able to monitor subsea assets remotely with innovative technology ensures that the subsea environment is better protected. With the ability to not only detect a range of materials such as gas, oil, tracer, and CO2, the systems can be engineered to detect a mixture of materials and can be customised to meet the exact needs of the application therefore supporting operator’s to cost-effectively monitor their subsea assets and minimising the impact these leaks could have on the environment.
Of all your contributions to the industry across your career, what has been your proudest achievement?
- There have been many contributions over the years but being able to go from the hands-on beginnings to putting that knowledge into a design aspect has always been extremely successful and rewarding process.
What do you think the future of Well-Integrity will look like in the short and long term?
- The future of Well-Integrity would be difficult to predict. As the industry moves towards a more sustainable future, the high cost of well abandonment and risk to reputation become increasingly higher. I believe the future of the industry is being able to manage and monitor aging assets with high-quality integrity over long periods of time. The products that Sentinel have available can give operators the opportunity to take the step of monitoring assets cost effectively and efficiently, all the while saving carbon emissions and reducing the industry’s carbon footprint as a whole.
How do you hope to contribute to the future of Sentinel?
- I hope to offer many solutions to the design and development of the existing products and future systems to continue working towards Sentinel’s mission of supporting the industry lower risk, reduce cost, and protect the environment.
What advice would you give the next generation of engineers?
- I would tell the next generation of engineers entering the industry to find a product and company that you believe in, and with this, you will remain motivated, passionate, and dedicated to each and every task you face