CEO Update – January 2021

Welcome to the first edition of Making Waves for 2021 – I wish you all a very happy New Year and hope you have kicked off January with renewed drive and hope for better prospects. 2021 is going to be an important year for IMCA on a few fronts: our business strategy, data collection, and some of our key committees.

In 2017, we took an outside-in look at our strategy, which resulted in four key focal points: (1) to maintain and strengthen our core activities; (2) to expand our environmental sustainability agenda; (3) to drive our digital awareness and (4) to refocus on promoting standardisation in our industry. We see the current crisis as the opportune moment to look back at this strategy with a critical eye – to understand what needs to change, and what can stay the same.

We need your help to make this reassessment on our performance, market positioning and future focus a success – do keep an eye out for our membership survey and help us shape IMCA to work for you.

It’s that time of year again where we start collecting key safety data to maintain an accurate and representative view of performance in our industry. Contractor members: please submit your data through our simple online process and help us all stay up to date with what’s core to our mission.

This year we’ve also kicked off a data collection exercise on ship fuel consumption by our marine members. These inputs will be particularly valuable as we support the IMO in developing future greenhouse gas emission KPIs. We recognise of course that offshore marine operations in our industry would not fit well with KPIs in mainstream shipping, but we need hard data from our members to show this. Again, we really value your support here – do get in touch if any questions.

2021 will also be key for many of our committees, as we hold elections deferred from 2020 as well as those previously scheduled for this year. Keep an eye out for requests for nominations and voting over the course of the year.

Our committee responsible for contracts and insurance has recently greatly expanded its scope and will now be known as the Legal, Contracts, Insurance, and Compliance Committee. We’ve invited additional members into the tent and work has set off at an electric pace, with several working groups addressing specialist areas – particularly in the wind energy market – being set up.

Unfortunately, I must sign off on a sad note with news that Mr. RP Singh, a loyal supporter of IMCA, died of COVID-19 in Mumbai on January 23. RP was a great advocate of IMCA, always enthusiastic in his work within the Asia-Pacific regional committee and always offering positive challenge in our mission to improve industry performance. We send our condolences to his family, friends, and all at his company, PT Advanced Offshore Services.

As always, let’s all stay safe and healthy.
Allen Leatt, IMCA Chief Executive

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