There’s more exciting news at OTAQ, with the recent appointment of Gary English as Senior Development Engineer adding to a number of new roles OTAQ has recently announced. Aquaculture and Offshore Energy are fast growing market sectors and the OTAQ Group has been expanding to accommodate the growing demand for their services.

OTAQ develops world-class marine technology products and innovation is at the heart of everything they do. In such a fast-paced industry, the continual development of new technology solutions is crucial and OTAQ’s engineering team plays a vital role in this.

Recruiting the right people is key to ensuring consistent progress at OTAQ and Gary English brings extensive experience and engineering expertise to the OTAQ Group. From his early beginnings as an Aircraft Technician to more recent roles in Project Engineer positions, Gary’s qualifications and experience will bring some valuable skills to the existing team. Gary has worked in the Diving and Subsea industry for over 10 years, with over 15 years’ experience in the Aerospace industry.

Gary was delighted to be offered the role of Senior Development Engineer in the Connectors division, where he will be based at the Aberdeen office. He said he is looking forward to being able to get involved in the development of new products and helping to streamline processes to drive efficiencies.

His role will include being the technical authority for all underwater connector and penetrator products as well as providing mechanical engineering support across the OTAQ Group as required.

Harry Rotsch, Chief Technology Officer at OTAQ Group is excited to welcome Gary to the team:

“We were very impressed with Gary’s experience across both the Diving and Subsea industry and the Aerospace industry and his career ambitions are exactly what we are looking for at OTAQ.

We are going through a very exciting period of growth at OTAQ, and we are busy building the best team to help us to achieve all of our goals. We are confident that Gary will bring some useful new ideas and become a very valuable member of the Engineering team.”

Keep a look out for the new innovative products that OTAQ will be launching in the near future, combining the latest technology and the industry-leading talents of the ever-expanding OTAQ team.

OTAQ continues to expand their team with the appointment of Mike Williams into the role of Junior Engineer. Mike has over seven years’ experience as an Electronics Technician for a commercial diving company, and he is very excited to be part of the innovative culture at OTAQ.

He said “I am really grateful to have this opportunity and to get started in this role. I am looking forward to learning from the rest of the team but also bringing my own ideas to help drive product development. The innovative culture at OTAQ really excites me and I am keen to start working on some interesting projects.”

Mike will be working at the Aberdeen office on projects for Aquaculture and Offshore Energy Applications and his experience and interests are a perfect match for his new role. With a HNC in Electrical Engineering, as well as an NC in Mechanical Engineering, Mike also holds PADI and AIDA diving instructor qualifications.

Harry Rotsch, Technical Director at OTAQ Group, shared his delight that Mike is joining the team: “We are really looking forward to seeing the qualities that Mike brings to OTAQ. His background and passion for computer programming are attributes that we feel will add great value to the team.

We are always looking to bring innovative thinkers to OTAQ, and Mike will have an important role to play in developing new products and refining our existing products. One of the factors we really liked about Mike was his commitment to continual self-development and his drive to learn.

As a dynamic and technology-centric company, part of our recruitment strategy is to find candidates who will enable us to continue to evolve and Mike has shown all of the signs that he will be a great addition to the OTAQ team.”

The sustained increase in scale and sophistication of development projects in the Aquaculture and Offshore Energy market sectors continues to drive underwater technology forward. By adding more experience to the engineering team, OTAQ can ensure they continue to deliver world-leading solutions for customers and end users in these sectors.

World class marine technology company, OTAQ Offshore, has today announced a significant contract award and exclusive supply agreement with Unique Group to supply a number of seabed landers.

The Aberdeen based company, a subsidiary of OTAQ PLC, with offices in Lancaster, Ulverston and Puerto Montt in Chile, will design and build the observation platforms in collaboration with Unique Group.

Commonly used to record physical, chemical and biological activity, OTAQ Offshore will fit the seabed lander systems with inspection products, such as very high-resolution stills cameras, Eagle IP video cameras, OceanSENSE leak detection system and Dragonfish laser measurement systems. The systems will also be configured to carry other third-party supplied inspection and monitoring equipment.

Two models are in line to be produced; a shallow-water version rated to 300m and a deep-water version rated to 4000 metres, available for rental and sale exclusively through Unique Group’s worldwide office network. Independently owned with global reach, Unique Group leads the way in providing engineering, expertise, sales and rental equipment, as well as the developing and implementing the latest technology for the marine, diving, pipeline and subsea market sectors. The two models will allow clients to use the landers in a range of applications using their existing cables and winches.

Phil Newby, Chief Executive Officer, OTAQ plc said: “We are thrilled Unique Group chose OTAQ Offshore to support them with this project. We have an exceptional team of engineers, whose skills are uniquely suited to this type of activity. Having Unique Group as our exclusive partner for sales and rentals will open new doors for us, as well as strengthen our position as a world class marine technology company.”

Chief Operating Officer at Unique Group, Sahil Gandhi, said: “We are excited to be able to further our partnership with OTAQ Offshore by collaborating on the development of seabed landers. Through this launch, we reiterate our commitment to offering exceptional products and solutions to our customers globally, and look forward to future innovations with OTAQ.”

Unique Group employs over 500 people worldwide through its six multi-site divisions: Survey Equipment; Autonomous Survey Vessels; Marine & Subsea; Diving & Life Support; Buoyancy & Ballast; and Medical Technology.

OTAQ Group are proud to announce our recent ISO 9001: 2015 quality system certification

ISO 9001 is an internationally recognised quality management system. For the past few months our Chief Operations Officer, Steve Burns, has been leading the team as we worked towards becoming accredited. We have been supported throughout the process by Dave Hutchinson at Qualiteq and we are now delighted to announce we have gained full ISO 9001;2015 certification through DNV-GL.

The ISO 9001;2015 quality system certification demonstrates our commitment to consistency, continual improvement and customer satisfaction. The certification also demonstrates our ability to consistently deliver products and services to market whist meeting statutory and regulatory requirements by applying an effective quality management system at OTAQ.

This is a significant milestone for OTAQ Group as we continue to improve our products and services for our valued customers. We have lots of new and exciting developments in the pipeline which we look forward to announcing in the new year!

OTAQ has appointed Tom Houghton as Business Development Manager for the newly formed OTAQ Connectors Division which has been created following the acquisition of Link Subsea Ltd earlier this year.

Tom has been working in the offshore industry since 2006 and brings extensive ROV knowledge combined with an in-depth understanding of technology in the subsea oil & gas sector. He started out in a hands on role as a ROV technician before moving into sales management and business development most recently in Unique Group.

Tom said “OTAQ Connectors has an incredible heritage in underwater connector design, engineering and production from our base in Cumbria spanning back to 1997.  I am relishing the opportunity to present OTAQ Connector products and services to the market as I believe we present a unique proposition in terms of our in house skills, high quality products, short lead times and over 20 years experience.”

Chris Hyde, Chief Commercial Officer of OTAQ Group said “We are delighted have Tom join us at OTAQ and further strengthen our team.  His industry knowledge will be a very valuable part of our introduction of the OTAQ Connectors brand to the market which includes the launch of several key new products in the coming months.”

Tom will be based at OTAQ’s new Aberdeen, UK  facility in the Innovation Park, Bridge of Don and can be reached at [email protected] or +44 7553209731