Seminar Speakers
Born and raised in maritime family, Kees has spent the last 35 years working in many disciplines including, in offshore construction, decommissioning & supply services, maritime services including towage, salvage, wreck removal and short-sea shipping, general/legal counsel to crew & HR manager, vessel manager, insurance manager and has been responsible for contract management and compliance & governance. He has 12 years’ experience in corporate and equipment finance and 8 years as a part-time dockworker.
Sylvia is Heerema’s General Counsel and responsible for all legal, insurance and compliance matters at Heerema. Sylvia is an experienced In-house Counsel, skilled in developing and implementing effective strategies to resolve complicated legal issues with a demonstrated history of more than 15 years of working in the oil & gas and Energy industry.
Koen De Vylder has held various legal positions throughout their career. Koen started working as a Lawyer at Delta Advocaten in 2004 and remained in this role until 2007. From 2008 to 2010, they served as a Legal Counsel at ISK Biosciences Europe SA. In 2011, they joined Keppel Corporation Limited as a Legal Manager until 2013. Currently, they are working at DEME Group, where they started as a Legal Counsel in 2013, moved on to become a Senior Legal Counsel in 2015, and is now the Legal Director Activity Line Offshore.
Koen De Vylder began their education journey at Koninklijk Atheneum Dendermonde, where they completed their secondary education from 1991 to 1997. Following that, they entered Ghent University from 1997 to 1999, earning a Bachelor's degree in Law. Koen then pursued their Master's degree in Law at KU Leuven from 1999 to 2003. Additionally, Koen De Vylder furthered their education at KU Leuven and obtained a Master's degree in Criminology in the academic year 2003-2004.
Clare Kempkens is a partner based in K&L Gates’ London office and is the Practice Group Co-Ordinator for the firm’s global Maritime and Offshore Energy Group. Clare advises a wide range of contractor clients on both contentious and non-contentious issues connected with offshore operations, contracts and insurance around the world. On a day-to-day basis she advises on drilling contracts, supply and services contracts, shipbuilding, EPC contracts, charters, management arrangements and associated insurance cover. Clare specialises in disputes with a heavy technical content including claims concerning the design, engineering and construction of a variety of offshore units and projects.
Iain has over 40 years’ experience in offshore marine construction around the world. He spent the early part of his career engineering and managing the installation of major offshore infrastructure before moving into commercial and strategy roles with tier one contractors.
He is a chartered engineer and has an MBA. He is a past President of IMCA and was previously supporting IMCA in expanding its position in offshore renewables.
Maggie is responsible for negotiating offshore construction contracts in Oil & Gas and the renewable energy sector. This includes managing legal and insurance risks as well as providing support in project execution. She has been with Allseas for 15 years after spending the early part of her career at the Bar in England followed by working inhouse in the Energy sector.
Amber obtained a law degree at the university of Antwerp, Belgium and a Master after Master in European Law at the university of Padua, Italy.
After her studies she started working for Marsh as a liability broker and had a similar role at AON.
13 years ago Amber started working at the legal and insurance department of DEME where she is screening all contract’s liability settings and further focusing on DEME’s corporate liability covers and on project specific covers such as Construction All Risk, most often for the Offshore Wind industry.
Tony leads Howden’s work on climate transition advisory, helping businesses, financial institutions and governments to accelerate their climate strategies and de-risk their transition investments.
Prior to Howden, he led transition planning, transition finance and sectoral transition pathway initiatives at GFANZ (Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero) and Transition Risk Advisory at WTW. He has served on the working group for the UK’s Transition Finance Council’s Policy, Pathway and Governance working group, and the delivery group for the Transition Planning Taskforce (TPT). He also led CDP’s disclosure and scoring platforms, integrating the TCFD, providing guidance and rankings to over 50,000 climate, water and deforestation disclosures.
Albert has over 7 years of experience in the energy transition. As advisor in project finance, M&A and tenders, he worked on over 5 GW worth of projects across offshore wind, onshore wind, transmission, BESS, PtX and geothermal technologies, mostly across Europe. Within Green Giraffe, he specialises on covering the offshore wind (and transmission) markets and is lead expert covering the offshore wind supply chain market. His previous track record includes Siemens (commercial bid management) as well as GE (FP&A) (today Vernova) further deepening his understanding from the perspective of key OEMs.
Jack has over 20 years of dedicated insurance broking experience. He specialises in providing advice and solving problems for clients in the Upstream Energy and Offshore industries.
Jack’s key area of expertise is with all areas of Offshore Construction, for both fixed and floating assets. In addition Jack has spent much of his career arranging operational and construction insurance coverage for floating assets such as FPSOs, FLNG vessels and FSRUs.
Jack joined Lockton in 2024 to establish the Offshore Projects team to support Lockton clients in the areas where Upstream Energy, Marine and Power intersect with one another. Prior to this he headed up a team of 12 specialists dedicated to the Offshore Contractor sector.