Offshore Energy 2017 award winners revealed

The offshore energy industry is constantly moving forward. Despite challenging times in the industry, there are impressive achievements that require celebration.

During the Offshore Energy Opening Gala Dinner and Awards Show in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, held on Monday, 22 October 2017, for the second time Navingo brought the industry together to celebrate some of these successes by presenting three industry awards.

The 420 attendees were very curious to find out who the winners of the Offshore Energy Awards would be.

The black-tie dinner gala, hosted by Pep Rosenfeld of Boom Chicago, served a culinary dinner and offered sparking musical interludes by Junior Jazz Unlimited a Jazz bigband with young musicians ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old.

The evening was officially opened by former Dutch cabinet member and energy activist Diederik Samsom.

And the winners are…

WINNER BEST INNOVATION IN OFFSHORE ENERGY AWARD: NEXT OCEAN

Next Ocean offers a new predictive wave motion technology to expand operational boundaries. By scanning sea waves they provide you with information on your ship’s motion minutes in advance. In our view this is an excellent innovation by new kids on the block. The problem of anticipating on (severe) wave conditions impacting operations at sea is a paramount one. The innovation includes analytics to come up with (huge) cost savings, improving safety of operations and realizing better use of assets at sea. It is a nice tool and ‘easy to understand’.

It is applicable in a broad part of the spectrum of the Maritime & Offshore domain. The technology promises a lot and is currently proven by a respectable set of customers in this domain. When broadly validated we belief this is really a new innovation ‘in hand’. To prove yourself in this field we highly recommend you to develop an interesting revenue model, but we are sure that within a broad customer base there is absolutely room for this unique ‘Buienradar for waves’.

WINNER OFFSHORE ENERGY PUBLIC OUTREACH AWARD: OUR OCEANS CHALLENGE

Our Oceans Challenge created a network of companies related to the offshore and maritime industry, knowledge institutes and startup accelerators to address the need for a more sustainable offshore industry. They carefully bridge the challenges that companies and organizations in the offshore energy sector face with committed (yet solution driven) individuals and start-ups. The network of industry partners that Our Oceans Challenge established, offers the possibility to test, improve and accelerate ideas into actions. The integration of ideas in existing businesses or start-ups is stimulated in the yearly organized challenge. Through their online platform and the events they have organized, they have boosted knowledge sharing. Reaching people, with a sustainability softs pot, worldwide. Stimulating cooperation and innovation. It is a clear statement from the Offshore Industry, which will influence the public opinion in a positive way.

WINNER OFFSHORE ENERGY YOUNG ENGINEER AWARD: DRIES LAMMENS

Dries is a great example of an excellent Young Engineer. He was responsible for coming up with a solution to install an export cable for an offshore wind farm through a protected natural reserve. With his team, he developed a machine for cable installation and burial that causes minimal invasion while installing the cable to the required burial depth. Dries was responsible for coming up with the concept, building the machine and then supervising the actual offshore installation.Dries is an exemplar problem solver and team leader and the jury was unanimous in naming him winner of the Young Engineer Award 2017.