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2019 SNAME OFFSHORE SYMPOSIUM
by J. Vazquez
April 25th, 2019
The SNAME OFFSHORE SYMPOSIUM took place on February 20, here in Houston. For me, the event was quite different than previous years, especially since we didn’t have any technical papers this time around and there weren’t many papers pertaining to jackups. One other thing was that the keynote speech (presentation) by Bas Buchner was certainly one of the best (if not THE best) I’ve ever attended.
I met Bas in 2003, while overseeing my first model testing in Wageningen, the Netherlands. I am not sure what his title was at the time, but now he is MARIN’s president. Per the short BIO at the symposium, Bas graduated from Delft University in 1991 and has been with MARIN ever since. As such, he has seen an amazing number of concepts discussed/tested, many of them before they were fully matured and has seen them come to fruition 10 or 20 years later. This also means that presently, he’s seeing what is likely to become reality in 10-20 years’ time.
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The main topic of his presentation was how naval architecture experience from the offshore oil & gas industry can be useful for the inevitable transition to a BLUE OCEAN. In his presentation, Bas mentioned that MARIN recently reached a very significant milestone: model #10,000. I wish you could see the sped-up video MARIN put together for this. Bas' enthusiasm for the topic was palpable, and I can say without hesitation that his delivery of the material was the best possible recruiting presentation - I’d certainly feel that I’d enjoy working for such an institute – Well Done, Bas!
With Bas’ permission, I include selected slides from his terrific presentation, pertaining to the points I mentioned above.
