The vision of… Bob Rietveldt

‘Turning vision into reality’, that is the credo of the Norwegian Ulstein Group, which includes Ulstein Sea of Solutions (USOS), a design company specialised in complex offshore construction vessels and drillships based in the Dutch town of Vlaardingen. Managing director Bob Rietveldt explains: ”Ulstein Sea of Solutions does what its company name says: we conceptualise a sea of solutions in the initial phase of a project, while taking technical and commercial boundary conditions into consideration. We do this either in dialogue with the client or pro-actively on our own.”

According to Rietveldt, their best projects were done in close dialogue with clients, but it surely is no contradiction to acting pro-actively: ”Companies with a vision need to know what the future market will demand, so they can start the initial talks with the right concepts to show they did their homework. The second step is to blend our ideas together with the client’s wishes into a customised concept. My vision is that we have to develop concepts that meet current and future market needs and we have to be able to substantiate our concepts so we hit the nail on the head. Our clients are usually big companies with their own technical departments. Therefore it is important not only to show that we have good ideas, but also that thorough consideration has been given to cost-effectiveness and the ability to perform, which are of course the key issues for our customers. That is what I call a pro-active approach to the market.”

That pro-active approach, or more the lack of it, was one of the reasons Rietveldt left his former employer IHC Gusto Engineering to start his own company Sea of Solutions in 2001: ”IHC Gusto had a re-active approach: we waited until the clients called us, which is not my way of doing things. The company was part of the IHC Caland group, as was SBM, the big money maker of the group. IHC Gusto became an engineering company and every time we had ideas, they had to make way for SBM projects, although the conception of these ideas and projects would have been necessary. I was convinced that it was important to develop new concepts for construction vessels, but at IHC Gusto, that was not possible. This in combination with the reactiveness made me, together with a few IHC Gusto engineers, decide to found a new company, based on a proactive approach originating from a combination of technology and marketing.”

Another step forward

Sea of Solutions developed well, their designs were finished just in time when the market for big construction vessels started to take off in 2004. ”In 2007, we had to make a decision: grow further by acquiring other companies or become part of a bigger group. We considered taking over an engineering company, but were also approached by Norwegian companies who asked us to join their groups. I met with Tore Ulstein and we connected very well. Ulstein has a good reputation, offers good innovative concepts and was looking for expertise in the heavy offshore segment of the market as they wanted to diversify into this segment; we wanted to expand and Sea of Solutions was complementary to Ulstein. A real win-win situation, so we decided to join the Ulstein Group in March 2008. Within the group, we are responsible for the vessels with a beam of 30 metres and up, in Norway they focus on vessels up to 30 metres beam. Of course I gave up a part of my own company, but Ulstein was new to the heavy offshore segment and therefore gave us the free hand to develop, so it was a right decision for both parties. That is why having a ‘click’ is so important, as well as the fact that Ulstein is a family-owned company. I would never have sold the company to a listed group because long-term vision is very important to me. In March 2008, we also won the Industrial Marketing Award, mainly because of our proactive approach of the market. It was a great trophy at the right time, a beautiful milestone to make yet another step forward together with Ulstein.”

In August 2011, Ulstein Group welcomed another Dutch company to their group: Idea Heavy Equipment based in Almere, now called Ulstein Idea Equipment Solutions (UIES) of which Rietveldt also is managing director. In total about 800 people work for the Ulstein Group worldwide, in the Netherlands, 42 people are based, 26 at USOS and 16 at UIES. Together, USOS and UIES form the ‘heavy offshore’ section of the Ulstein Group, in Norway the focus is on the offshore supply vessel segment (OSV). USOS designs about two to three vessels per year, which accumulates to about 20 vessels in total, realised on yards around the globe since its start in 2001.

Innovative designs

Renowned designs of USOS are the pipelay crane vessel Seven Borealis for Subsea 7, delivered early 2012, and the recently delivered first deepwater construction vessel Aegir, owned by Heerema, but USOS does not sit still: ”Petrofac, a large offshore oilfield service company, is currently tendering for an even bigger deepwater construction vessel”, tells Rietveldt. ”Our design is finished, several yards are still in the race and I expect the order to be placed this year. We see deepwater construction vessels as a growing segment, following the irreversible trend of drilling in ultra-deep water. We expect the oil and gas prices to stay on a high level and most new, major fields will probably be in deep water or harsh environments, which requires new innovative ideas and solutions for drilling and offshore construction, which is right up our alley, although we do see a tendency to the midwater market as well. Another project we work on is the Ulstein Deepwater Enabler design, a next generation multipurpose subsea construction vessel to support the deepwater field development as a cross-over between the heavy offshore and OSV segment. A customised version is under construction for Toisa to be delivered mid-2015. The Ulstein Deepwater Enabler base case is developed in close cooperation with NOV, an American/ Norwegian equipment provider, and we expect that a big series will be built. USOS works in two ways to turn visions into reality: on the one hand, we give all appropriations to innovative designs, like the Aegir, so an offshore contractor like Heerema can tender at shipyards and we assist in the development process. On the other hand, we offer an instant design package complete with equipment, which is provided to a yard for construction when an owner receives a charter contract, like for example the Ulstein Deepwater Enabler. In this case, the ship owner sees Ulstein and NOV together with the selected yard as the supplier of the vessel and will turn to us during the lifetime of the vessel, if they need further assistance.”

USOS and UIES always look for new markets, for example wind turbine installation vessels for the offshore wind market. Rietveldt: ”Today we work in three segments: the exploration and construction segment in the oil and gas industry and the installation segment in the offshore wind industry. UIES today is mainly involved in the latter, creating handling tools, for example a pile gripper frame used to handle monopiles during pile driving into the seabed. We believe that in the future, more installations will be done based on floating installation and our Deepwater Enabler design is prepared to place foundations for wind turbines. Recently USOS and UIES jointly developed a lifting tool and a vessel design to install a complete turbine including foundation in one single lift, and to achieve that a lifting capacity of 11,000 tons was necessary. As there are no standard solutions for the offshore wind industry yet besides jack-ups, we as designers are able to contribute innovative and new ideas to this industry.”

Solutions for the Arctic

”Another interesting and emerging market is the Arctic”, Rietveldt continues. ”It will require a long development time though, because it has to be handled delicately and the environmental boundary conditions are very important: the oil price needs to stay high and stable, otherwise it will not be profitable, and as the environmental requirements are very strict, proper legislation and of course financing are of importance. Oil companies will have to engage in a dialogue with governments, pressure groups and legal advisors to define those boundaries. In case the drilling starts and reservoirs are found, to produce them is another question to solve; it is an area that has our attention in the coming years. It is the only area where one expects to be able to find big fields and because of global warming, the region becomes more and more accessible. Several clients have started the research on Arctic drilling vessels, one of them being Statoil. We were involved in a feasibility study for Statoil, offering our Arctic drillship design Ulstein AXDS, a totally new concept developed from scratch with selected – mainly Dutch – technology partners featuring amongst other a forward and aft operations centre, positioning by either DP or turret mooring, two helidecks and a composite shelter. The concept was very well received by Statoil and the drilling contractors involved, but unfortunately we were not selected for the next phase. However, we have already received requests from other oil companies and drilling contractors for this design, so we are confident that we will be successful in this area. I think it will take years though until the first vessel for the Arctic gets contracted. The first vessels that will be built will be used solely for the exploration of the Arctic, where also supply vessels will be necessary of course. That is why the Arctic is so interesting to us, as to be able to operate there asks for specific solutions that exactly fit in Ulstein’s business. The portfolio and innovation of the Ulstein Group makes it possible to develop vessels in a different way and that is where we like to stand out.”

As the offshore industry has been quite stable over the last couple of years, USOS has not been hit by the crisis. Rietveldt comments: ”Of course it has been more difficult to get vessels built because financing proved to be more difficult. However, when contractors and oil companies really wanted something, the banks eventually cooperated, although it takes longer to reach financial agreements before being able to effectuate building contracts. Financing has mainly been difficult for smaller offshore companies and newcomers in the business.”

For the long run

Growth is the keyword for the future, says Rietveldt: ”Our strategy in the Netherlands is to grow in the subsea, deepsea and Arctic markets. However, we are looking for sustainability, as our plans are always meant to be for the long run. Pro-actively developing vessel designs and equipment means we can stay a frontrunner, innovating with high-tech design and components in our concepts, which is what it is all about. We will not bet on adding shipyard capacity, the group already owns its own shipyard in Norway, but we want to offer our complete packages to several yards, who can build our designs. Our own Norwegian shipyard is used as a laboratory to gain more knowledge about the prototypes, so when we build a series of vessels abroad, we are able to use our group knowledge to support our partner yards. We want to invest in good relationships with them and increase our value in the building process. We do not only want to witness the birth of a project, we want to be part of the whole project up to – and if possible beyond – the delivery of the vessel, adding value to the client. Being a part of the Norwegian and the Dutch maritime cluster makes us unique, we want to further expand our business, autonomously as well as through acquisitions and cooperations with reliable partners, and further contribute to the current and future market needs.”

Sustainability is also about the environment, and part of Rietveldt‘s long-term vision: ”Minimising our environmental footprint is what we look for. We strive for vessel designs with less emissions and fuel consumption. Where feasible we look at LNG propulsion and onboard energy generation and energy storage. Just take lifting operations as an example: the lifting itself uses energy, but lowering generates energy. Another sustainability aspect we pay attention to is the comfort of the people on board, as a high level of comfort helps attracting employees as it becomes more and more difficult to find people who want to work in this specific industry away from home. The current generation was raised with iPads, iPhones and Playstation, therefore the Ulstein Group developed the Ulstein Bridge Vision: everything that is needed on the bridge will be projected on the bridge windows and operators can access the controls and information by using touch-commands and simply swipe to get to the next function. We want to create comfort and a way of working that fits the next generation.”

Gail van den Hanenberg