The Vision of Lonneke Holierhoek

Motivating organiser, who doesn’t mind to be strict sometimes

After 17 years at Dutch dredging and offshore contractor Van Oord and its predecessors Ballast Ham Dredging and HAM/Hollandsche Beton Groep, Lonneke Holierhoek seized the opportunity to become managing director and partner of Offshore Independents: “A young company with an appealing motto, a lot of possibilities in terms of growth and the opportunity to further build the company, a challenge I gladly accepted.”

Offshore Independents (OI) is a consultancy company providing engineering and project management services to the offshore industry. The company was founded in January 2010 by three men who lost their jobs due to the fact that the company they worked for closed down its Dutch branch. They decided to combine their knowledge and make this knowledge available to the whole industry instead of using it for just one employer again.

Holierhoek: “Our strength lies in several unique characteristics: we are fully independent, which means we are not affiliated with other organisations. Our people have practical knowledge in all areas of the business, be it shipbuilding, dredging, contracting, specialised equipment, and we make these backgrounds available to the whole market through our independence. Due to our previous positions, we know how contractors think and from that knowledge we are able to offer reliable advice.”

Keywords

Independent, knowledgeable, broad expertise, strong network, mature and offering the full package are OI’s keywords. Services include consultancy, project management, procurement and tendering support, designing, and engineering capacity, but OI also makes market analyses, offer juridical advice regarding contracts between parties and advises customers how to approach the market, for example operators that only once or twice start a new project.

“Our motto is: doing great stuff with great people; this motto guides us in our decisions. Of course, we have a business to run, but it should be fun”, says Holierhoek.

OI has three sister companies, Auxilium Offshore, founded in 2011 and specialising in integrating marine assets, IRM Systems, offering consultancy, risk management and emergency response in the area of brown fields, and Windependents, founded in 2012 and focusing on renewable energy onand offshore. Windependents was founded because OI did have the knowledge for offshore wind, but customers did not find OI, as OI was more profiled as focussing on oil and gas.

Holierhoek: “Each company provides a dedicated offering to a specific market segment, but all four share IT, HR, finance and facilities.”

The whole group employs 65 people and also has a pool of flexible employees, which are specialists in very specific areas. Headquartered in Capelle aan den IJssel, near Rotterdam (for now, OI plans to move to the city of Rotterdam in the second half of April), the company also has offices in Delft and Zaltbommel in the Netherlands and in Baku, Azerbaijan and Houston, Texas, United States of America. “We chose Azerbaijan as it is difficult to get access in the Caspian Sea region from Europe, it has proved useful to have an office in the region itself”, explains Holierhoek.

IABLCC

Being managing director of OI also means being involved with IABLCC. IABLCC was founded in May 2014 by four parties, one of them being OI. The company offers consultancy and compliance services in the field of anti-bribery and corruption. In the offshore industry, more and more companies pay attention to compliance with anti-bribery and corruption legislation. IABLCC helps these companies with tailor-made advice on policies and anti-bribery management systems and by offering audits, training for employees, certificates of compliance and certificates of validation.

International clients

OI can count well-known international names from the offshore industry to their clients: Wintershall, Heerema Marine Contractors, Seaway Heavy Lifting, Boskalis, Vattenfall, just to name a few. Current projects include a fibre optic cable and umbilical installation for Seaway Heavy Lifting in the Caribbean and work for the South Stream Offshore Pipeline Project, a technical impressive project with the challenges of very deep water, very large diameter pipes and a difficult seabed. One of OI’s long-term clients is Van Oord Offshore.

“When Van Oord decided to be able to offer the package including pipelaying, OI supported the company from the market study to the execution of several projects. With Van Oord, I was involved in Van Oord’s pipelaying ambitions and when OI enforced the team, we worked together well. Our knowledge completed each other. Later I left the offshore division to become staff manager of Van Oord’s QHSE department, when I got the opportunity to become managing director and partner of OI.”

When asked to describe herself as a manager, Holierhoek has to think for a moment before answering: “I am a good organiser of departments and processes, building structure in a company to support the company goals even more. What I think is very important is to motivate by being given a free hand. I always think to myself: what would make me walk that extra mile? The answer is by not only working within a set framework, but by being given freedom and responsibility in my work, so that is what I give my employees as well. We want people to grow and flourish in their own specialism and stimulate creativity. Inspiration, coaching and personal development are important. However, I can be strict too, progression is important, as is meeting deadlines. I don’t mind being strict sometimes.”

Regarding marketing, Holierhoek realises the company has been in a luxury position, but she wants to be prepared for the future: “We are in the process of professionalising and developing our marketing strategy. Our strength are our 65 professionals, all with an immense network, and we are hired based on word of mouth within our network. The offshore industry is such a small world, everyone knows one another. However, our ambition level now is so high that word by mouth is not sufficient anymore, therefore, we have to prepare. We were and still are in the luxury position that we do not need marketing and press releases etcetera, but if we wait until we need it, it is too late.”

What does the future hold?

“The offshore industry feels the pressure of the current low oil price,” Holierhoek continues, “it is risky to put all your eggs in one basket. Continuing to invest in complementary markets with the aim to become less volatile to market fluctuations is on our agenda as is creating a more balanced customer mix with stronger focus on owner’s engineering and lender’s engineering, which is yet under-exploited territory. Despite the low oil price we grow harder than the past two years. The first three years were years of growth, after that we had two years of reduced growth due to our consolidation and professionalisation efforts and now we have started to show accelerated growth again because of the diversification. We are able to do work in all phases of the oil and gas chain, not only during developing fields and the exploration, but in the decommissioning phase as well, something that will happen more and more in the future.”

“The crisis does not affect us, however, we do see a shift: the emphasis nowadays lies more on renewable energy and decommissioning. One of the assignments we currently get are consultancy jobs for investment companies who look into investing in the offshore industry, as we are very familiar with the industry. Think of project portfolios, market analyses or singling out competitors. Some of the investors are especially interested in companies in trouble, who profit from the current situation, but when the oil price was high, it also was an interesting industry for investors.”

What trends does Holierhoek see in the offshore industry? “Sustainability is a longterm trend, it is necessary for the world and from a perspective of a global inhabitant, I hope that this trend will be here to stay. Before the price drop, the trend in oil and gas was that small scale was allowed again, it was not only ‘bigger, better, more’ anymore. Hiring small companies, chopping a project into smaller parts, that was all fine. Procurement departments are still there, central purchasing, smart spend and vendor registration sometimes disrupt the obtaining of the best result. Strange, actually, as there was a need for a small scale approach. We actually hoped that the procurement departments would put less emphasis on volume and leave the standard approach of ‘one size fits all’, but due to the price dip, it is more difficult to predict how this will develop in the long term. The development of the Arctic and other difficult issues was a hot topic, a lot has been written and there have been some developments, but we personally have not been involved in these kind of projects.”

“We are on the verge to moving to a monumental building in the north of Rotterdam. The reason being not only our growth – our current building is well able to accommodate that growth for the years to come – but even more our concept of doing great stuff with great people: we want to commit our people with the broad experience and knowledge, the atmosphere is great, the projects are varied, as are our clients, we sustain our knowledge continuously to be able to offer unique knowledge. In short, the work content is fun, but the circumstances need to be fun, too. We want to offer an inspiring look and feel to the work environment and that is difficult in the industrial area we reside at now. Therefore we decided to move. In our new office, sustainability has our attention. The carpet for example is made from recycled fishing nets, we have an energy efficient shower, to stimulate our employees to cycle to work. We do not have a policy regarding sustainability yet, however, we do pay attention to sustainability in a pragmatic way.”

Growth? Yes, but modestly

Holierhoek adds: “We do applaud growth, but only as long as we can keep our small scale. Therefore we have divided our work in different product groups and we will continue to do so. We want to be close to our customers, maintaining the feeling of being a club. Within the next five years we would like to double in size, but retain and continue the product groups and diversification. When you feel you do your work as a team, it gives you energy. Foreign offices and new markets have our attention. Our team is very diverse, young as well as experienced and international, and when we recruit, we use our network, nationally and internationally. We want to continue to invest in experienced personnel while also attracting young talent. Together, 65 people know a lot of people in the industry. Many people are hired via-via, the strength of verbal recommendation is priceless. Next to that, we use social media, mainly LinkedIn, and our newsletter. What is remarkable is that being an engineering company, we employ a lot of women. When one sheep leaps over the ditch…”

Gail van den Hanenberg