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Welcome to Storyville ISE on Deepwater > · Where Seagulls Dare > · The Job of My Life > The Dear Hunter > · Conquering Chaos > The Wind Box of Tricks > · The Favela Fella >

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8 4 ISE on Deepwater It is, according to BP, the harshest all-year round drilling location in the world. The Schiedhallion field, half way between the Orkney Island and Faroes, but closest to the Shetlands. This is the story of a BP the crew immersed in a simulated environment. >

16 The Dear Hunter He estimates the hog to be 32 meters away, further back stands a stag, between them a rabbit and a pheasant, he turns to his left, takes aim, puts his whole system into a state of suspended motion and click, the arrow, the deer never stood a chance. >

Where Seagulls Dare ‘No pressure on me then,’ she said as she lifted the eight kilo drone off the long grass in the backyard of a school just outside Esbjerg. >

12 The Job of My Life In June they commanded a fleet of nine anchor handling vessels, taking three quarters of a million tons of concrete and steel, 350 kilometres out into the Atlantic and placing its 130 metre wide base within a metre of a prepositioned ocean-bed pipe connection. >

26 24 The Favela Fella

20 Conquering Chaos Sitting in comfort, we watched it on the news, but what is it like to live through a hurricane and its subsequent devastation? >

The Wind Box of Tricks When you are stuck in a box at the top of a 70 meter pole in the middle of nowhere and you have to stretcher an injured colleague to safety, you don’t want to be thinking, ‘so how do we get out of this one?’ >

Even before he opens his mouth people ask if he’s a Viking and team mates from soccer games in the favelas ask him to their homes to show the family ‘this man from Denmark.’ >

what’s a story? People often ask, ’what’s a story?’ This, our thirtieth eSea, is a good example in that there’s most likely a story in everybody and everything. The industries we serve in terms of training are rich in characters. Characters like Hans who has seen every aspect of the maritime world, but who still looks forward to work and describes his last task as ‘the job of my life.’ What’s it like to be in your seventies and still be invigorated by work, in towing out a concrete island into the Atlantic and placing it spot on its final location? We find out. David on the other hand is a young man in his twenties, looking to the future, but already

has a colourful past and Sonnich in midlife, but his only crisis is in what fantastic physical challenge to next take on. We’re not sure many of us could even contemplate doing his last endeavor. These are just two people, but they are colleagues to those who sit around them and to whom these stories of what they do in their free time might come as a revelation. A new course was also a revelation for a crew working in what is regarded as the toughest year-round conditions on earth. What they saw in each other, in how departments on board a rig can be responsive to each other,

was one of the main takeaways from the Immersive Simulation Environment they had been submersed in. Another new course was far from subversive, how to obtain a bird’s eye view of the world using drones. For Erica and Colin on the Esbjerg held course, it was intense, but potentially rewarding as they strove to take advantage of new technology. All these people had stories to tell. All you have to do is read them and ask, what’s the story in me? Welcome to Storyville.

Richard Lightbody rli039@maersktraining.com

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ISE on Deepwater

A BP crew working in one of the toughest locations on earth are immersed in a simulated environment

It is, according to BP, the harshest all-year round drilling location in the world. The Schiedhallion field, half way between the Orkney Island and Faroes, but closest to the Shetlands, is not even in the North Sea, it is in the Atlantic. Life can be extreme, but so are the rewards. 4

ISE on Deepwater

he Deepwater Aberdeen semisub has completed the first two of a seven-year contract. Enough time for teething problems, if any, to be solved, for the crew to get into a routine and for it to be possible to wonder if things work even better. At Maersk Training in Svendborg they are in year five of operating some of the most sophisticated simulation software in the industry in the MOSAIC II complex. You might think they too have relaxed having reached an extraordinarily high level through the sixteen crews they prepared for their new builds through Performance Enhancement Training. In both cases, far from it. Out of PET grew ISE, Immersive Simulation Environment, where there was a reduced need for team building and a greater need to sharpen the interaction between all the departments. Communication is a buzz word, but that is largely because many mishaps are caused by a lack of

"Here we see them as a real team, they do really talk together and interact." Rig Manager, Bjarte Fadnes Gary Kelso, blue shirt, looks on from the drilling control room it, particularly between different spheres of operation. As Tor Reidar Berge, OIM on Deepwater Aberdeen said towards the end of the course, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;On board rivalry between departments is pretty good, but you work yourself into a habit. You go to the pre-tower meeting we do the deck and drilling part. We have the communications within the framework we normally do, we go to the technical handover, we have the communication there, we have the permits and we have our communication in

Getting the message through from a smoke-filled engine room

ISE Hamburgefintsiv on Deepwater

Answering the call in the Crisis Control Room

our normal way. And when we come here the instructors are able to give us input, to put us in situations where we need more communication, where we need to improve to understand each other better.’ ‘Here we see them as a real team, they do really talk together and interact,’ says Rig Manager, Bjarte Fadnes, ‘They really buy into it

ROOM FOR CRISIS The ISE course was the maiden voyage of a new facility built inside the MOSAIC simulation complex, the Crisis Control Room. Although only one additional aspect in a complex that boasts a drill deck, bridge, engine control and engine room, cranes, an onshore emergency room and muster points, it marked a significant change from the

even if there are small differences in the set-up from their own rig. The atmosphere contributes to that. Because you are kind of in the middle of nowhere they stay together after the course in the evenings. Everything is provided by Maersk Training, nice facility, gym, pool tables, movie night – kind of being on a rig, but here you have beer in addition.’

previous courses, the final piece in the jigsaw. Here OIM Tor could call in his crisis team and they had all relevant information in front of them on a bank of screens. Over the four and a half days Tor admitted to seeing a huge change in the way his crew perceived each other. ‘It is like the crane operator. On board they see him with a permit and he goes off and

ISE on Deepwater

does his job, but here they see what he does have punch, there are helicopters for him to take care of, boats, what is going in and out, fire and gas systems – it is a lot of things not just being in a good warm environment. It is understanding of each other that will be the best benefit.’ Overseeing all that was going on was Gary Kelso, BP’s Well Operations Manager, North Sea. He too was impressed. ‘What has been different to this course from all the other simulation courses is the way they integrate all the various parts of teams on the rig. So you’ve got bridge, engine room, drill floor, control room managing things.’ DRAMA UNFOLDS The main exercise was a scenario in which the instructors working behind the scenes set situations and then respond to the reactions of crew. Unscripted it is like a drama that unfolds quickly in directions only determined by how the crew reacts.

Gary looked on, but also looked to the future. ‘The key is what we do with the experience gained and how we build on this when we go back to the rig. It is all very well to have four days in Svendborg practicing, but hopefully through the course there has been a lot of learning opportunities for the individuals and for the team. I’m interested what the takeaways are.’ There are takeaways, but like all training they tend to be silent. It is often tempting to see reduced lost time incidents as lucky circumstance. Maybe you can buy luck. Maybe not, but you can buy into clearer communication.

The ISE course sees the various departments working on various projects, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with others. In one exercise they all come together as if in the real world. This is a storyboard video of how the exercise unfolds. 7

Where Seagulls Dare Hamburgefintsiv

The eye in the sky that is a new industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest tool

Where Seagulls Dare

‘It was so long ago I can’t remember what it was like,’ says Erica reflecting on the day she took her driving test. With her hands she turned the craft into a perfect figure of eight and returned it to the place she’d taken off from ten minutes earlier. She was halfway through her pilot’s test and ten minutes away from hopefully joining her partner Colin in qualifying to be able to operate a Class II drone. ‘No pressure on me then,’ she said as she lifted the eight kilos of aircraft off the long grass in the backyard of a school just outside Esbjerg. The test location has to be outside the city boundary for legal reasons, only qualified pilots can operate commercially in built up areas. Erica Whitty and Colin Martin had come from even further afield, from the bottom and top of Ireland respectively. They have different skills, but together they

are a team who drive all over Europe inspecting and repairing wind turbine blades. Colin from Carrickfergus in the north was formally a motor mechanic before he saw the possibilities in wind, Erica from Wexford in the south worked offshore in the oil and gas industry. The third participant on the three-day course, the first of its kind held by Maersk Training, had already headed home, he too had passed, but with the Class IB drone certificate there is no live flying test in front of an independent adjudicator. The three-day course in Esbjerg is run in conjunction with WeFly, a Copenhagen-based company founded by Kasper Bække four years ago. Kasper got into the drone business through circumstance rather than accident. As a diver he’d been making underwater videos for years. He came out of the sea to join a video production company and on one shoot the client 9

suggested that some aerial shots would add to the story. His boss thought it too complicated and said no, but it got Kasper thinking. He went home, got on the internet and into business. It was a natural move, after all his second name Due translates as bird. His company now makes videos and he teaches others to fly – something that came very naturally to him. Erica and Colin had experimented with a smaller drone but the DJI M600 they would use on the course

was in another league and Erica admitted to being nervous. ‘The difference is the same as driving a car and a racing car,’ says Kasper.

are keeping up with higher specs every few months, improved software and cameras. Kasper pointed out that a camera with a 12 megapixels lens cost €10,000 a year ago, today the price is the same, but the lens is 20 megapixels.

Erica and Colin see the drone license as a way of developing and improving the services they offer. It will be an additional cost to the turbine owners, but the offset is the time saved in doing the most awkward of inspections.

‘What that means is that we can fly and gather the information from a safer distance. On the course the participants are given access to live websites which indicate the dangers and no fly zones. Dangers such as pylons

MEGA IMPROVEMENTS The whole of the turbine industry is moving rapidly and the drones 10

and other man-made objects that could interfere with the drone’s GPS, the vital controlling system that responds to the handset and allows the camera to operate in the steadiest of modes. There was no camera on the drone operated firstly by Colin and then Erica. ‘This is a flying test, not a camera exercise,’ says Kasper, ‘we don’t risk an expensive lens when doing this, especially when the test involves hovering over a lake.’

Drone classes and training admission requirements Category 1A – Drones up to 1,5 kg The candidate must be minimum 18 years of age. Category 1B – Drones up to 7 kg The candidate must be minimum 18 years of age, and 9 flights, minimum 2 hours Category 2 – Drones up to 25 kg The candidate must be minimum 18 years of age, and 9 flights, minimum 2 hours

Operating a camera whilst flying creates a new level of multifunctionality. Camera operation is a separate course, although for turbine inspections you tend to fly the drone as if it were the camera in order to collect the images you need. The M600 has two permanently built in cameras. In flying for video production it is usual to have a second operator who controls the revolving lens, its focus and telephoto. There are two major aspects about drone flying that consume much

of the time spent in the classroom. First, as always, there is safety. Flying something around that weighs about 10 kilos, they can go up to 25, takes a responsible person with responsive actions. Secondly there is the whole issue of privacy. People naturally assume that the drone has a camera and take that assumption one stage further by believing that it’s pointed at them.

the top of a hotel. You have to fly past rooms to get to the roof and people might be alarmed,’ says Kasper. ‘What we teach is to ask the pilots to filter what they are doing. Ask themselves if they were in the position of the public, how would they feel? If they are comfortable there’s a reasonable chance that it is OK. If not, don’t do it.’ Kasper remembers that there were a lot of rules when he started. Now there are a lot of rules but at least they are in some

BASIC INSTINCTS ‘Say you have a job looking at the air conditioning system on 11

order. The certificates gained on the course are valid for Denmark only. Different countries have differing rules, but armed with the Danish one you can apply for specific flying permission in many countries without having to do a further test. Erica brought the drone back down to within feet of where it took off. The adjudicator asked her to do one final thing. ‘Take the controller in your left hand.’ He then grasped and shook her right, ‘You’ve passed.’

After half a century in the business a veteran towmaster lands

"The Job of My Life" 350 kms out in the Atlantic Hans places ‘concrete island’ bang on target

ans Villadsen has a fabulous view from his veranda, an ever changing seascape, Svendborg Sound, regular ferries, irregular yachts and islands that appear and disappear, Hjortø, Tåsinge and in the distance Ærø. At 71 the temptation to sit, enjoy and wonder what old detective series to catch in the afternoon might seem overpowering – for Hans, it’s not. ‘I’m busier than ever since I retired from Maersk,’ he says.

The jobs and opportunities, far from drying up were queueing up and he’d just returned from ‘the job of my life’ – the Hebron project in Canada. Along with lifetime friend and colleague Poul Jørgensen, his senior by four years, and ‘baby’ of the party, 70 year-old Christian Holm, the trio were responsible for one of the most impressive maritime maneuvers of the 21st or possibly any other century. It was a bit like carrying out a moon landing.

vessels, taking three quarters of a million tons of concrete and steel, 350 kilometres out into the Atlantic and placing its 130 metre wide base within a metre of a prepositioned ocean-bed pipe connection. ‘The maximum margin for the placement was five metres. There was only one shot at it,’ Hans said with a mixture of pride and humility. It was the second time in 20 years that a platform of this size had been towed into position in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin. ‘Poul was on that project with the Hibernia,

In June they commanded a fleet of nine anchor handling 12

and they wanted the experience back this time. They said that if they have another one in twenty years “we might not call you”, fair enough I think.’ We met Hans as he was just finishing another job, passing on his experience to tomorrow’s tow masters who were on a Basic Jacking course at Maersk Training in Svendborg. ‘I do the morning session telling them what it is like out there.’ The classroom he was in was just a ten-minute walk from his fabulous veranda.

Hamburgefintsiv The Job of My Life

‘The Hebron was a one off. I was on duty when we placed it, there was a silence in the room – just one opportunity to get it right, across the world few jobs like this, you don’t get many chances like it.’

The Job of My Life

At home he was preparing to pack for a holiday that had been disrupted by the ice reports that had delayed the tow from leaving Mosquito Cove in Newfoundland and Labrador. ‘We waited for more than four weeks before we could set off for the planned two week tow.’ The tow in fact took 13 days, about one kilometer an hour. Back home in Svendborg the holiday to Barcelona was put on ice.

Looking at it waiting to be towed it is hard to understand even how it sits up straight. That’s because, rather like the icebergs they were keen to avoid, below the water line lies a mass balancing the whole platform, a concrete gravity based structure (GBS). It looks like the top is supported by a many tiered wedding cake. The subsea mass will become an oil reservoir once production starts at the end of the year.

HELD UP BY BERGS All that time the trio of septuagenarians were on board the platform doing six hours shifts, waiting for the moment the ice spotting planes and Christian on board checking vessel would come back with an all clear so tug coordinators Poul and Hans could start the move. At $14 billion, three times the original budget, they were not going to take any risks with moving the man-made technical island.

The production timetable is unusual in drilling terms in that the platform will not connect onto a pre-drilled head. Oil was discovered in 1980 at Hebron, the platform will do its own drilling and once in production will hit 150,000 barrels a day at peak rates.

Other Age Bending Heros – Bond’s age on last movie: 57 Roger Moore 53 Sean Connery 49 Pierce Brosnan 47 Daniel Craig 43 Timothy Dalton 30 George Lazenby

Arm and Marystown, there was not one single lost-time incident. It is a monument to safety. Then there’s the other interesting statistic, the figure 215, the combined ages of the Danish trio responsible for the tow. Hans retired from Maersk Supply Services in 2011, ‘but in truth I could be busier now than ever. The good thing at my age is that you are in charge or what you decide to do. I can’t sit down looking out of the window so when some jobs come up that look very interesting, I think why not?

In its final position the platform is an island with a population of 220 but the most outstanding statistic is that in the 40 million man hours it took to build it in Bull

SOUND OF SILENCE ‘The Hebron was a one off. I was on duty when we placed it, there was a silence in the room – just one opportunity to get it right, across the world few jobs like this, you don’t get many chances like it.’ It was all down to experience. The average age of the actors playing in their last James Bond movie is a little over 47 – the average age of the trio of tow-masters in charge of the Hebron project in June was 72. The trio, Poul, Hans and Christian regularly add their expertise to courses held at Maersk Training in Svendborg.

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Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi annual salary and endorsements £41 million Irish golfer Rory McIlroy wears Nike and uses TaylorMade clubs for $300 million

The Dear Hunter

Swiss tennis player Roger Federer winnings and endorsements £36 million

British racer Lewis Hamilton totals £32 million Danish archer Erik Nielsen gets a free bow and arrows and aims to win a bottle of wine. 16

He estimates the hog to be 32 meters away, further back stands a stag, between them a rabbit and a pheasant, he turns to his left, takes aim, puts his whole system into a state of suspended motion and click, the arrow, the deer never stood a chance. But it remained standing. Erik’s quarry was not an innocent Bambi, but a polyurethane model.

he arrow from the compound bow, immediately Erik released it, shot out at 350kph. The technology of archery today carrying on a tradition that has seen it as a means of hunting and a weapon of war since man progressed from throwing rocks. For something as basic as a bit of wood and string propelling a stick it has had a remarkable evolution. Erik P. Nielsen has been part of the Danish archery scene since 1972 and the deer

was just another bag of points for him in the World 3D Archery Championships in Robion, in the south of France. 3D archery differs from the sport you may have seen during the Olympics. That’s target archery where the coloured bullseye is a set distance away. To compete Erik reckons you need two hours practice every day. With 3D archery, the targets are animals, polyurethane, but with points awarded for hitting certain crucial areas, the heart being a maximum of 14. Erik a safety instructor at Maersk Training in Esbjerg has only recently come back into the Danish team although he’s never really left it – for a decade he was the coach and although competing and becoming Danish champion during that time, couldn’t select himself.

Hamburgefintsiv The Dear Hunter

The Dear Hunter

"In Europe representing your country, you get a medal, a handshake and a bottle of wine, if you are lucky" In the US 3D Archery is a professional sport with men and women regularly competing for prizes of up to $50,000. ‘In Europe representing your country, you get a medal, a handshake and a bottle of wine, if you are lucky,’ says Erik. Funding his sport is a factor in selection and has in the past

forced him to say no to more international honours. ‘It is a question of time and travel expenses,’ explains Erik, ‘turning professional in Europe isn’t an option unless you have a private income. You travel 80-90 days a year since there are a number of events you have to compete in so that you remain up there.’

his equipment five minutes before he was due to start his practice session.’ Erik is a walking encyclopedia about the history of the bow and arrow. He currently favours the compound bow, the one that looks like a sculpture of a bike created by an artist who never saw either. They cost about $1500. Here fortunately the better archers, like Erik, can get sponsorship from the leading manufactures, a bit like top golfers and clubs. Incidentally the oldest surviving bows are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark, dated 9,000BC.

WORLDWIDE TARGET Those events are scattered around the world. The sport is very big in Argentina. Next year the European championships are in Gothenburg, virtually a home venue, but then the world championship is in Canada. For France he took a week off work and he and the team drove down to Provence.

TECHNO HOOD The team consists of three, each shooting a different type of bow, for the traditional long bow aka Robin Hood, to barebow and the compound. ‘With 3D the archers can use sights to see the targets but they cannot measure, it is down to estimating,’ says Erik

‘Driving is by far the better way to do it. Our bows require special cases and these cost money to air transit. Also, like a guy from Canada experienced, they tend to get lost. In Robion he only got

looking out of his classroom window. ‘That flagpole is 23:2 metres away.’ Archery is one of those sports that has a purpose. You suspect that in a situation where you are in the wilderness scavenging for food or need your lounge carpet measured but you have no tape, Erik is the man to have by your side.

Hamburgefintsiv

Sitting in comfort, we watched it on the news, but what is it like to live through a hurricane and its subsequent devastation? Kenneth Skjaerbaek Mogensen takes us to his home city.

Conquering Chaos A

t the Maersk Training centre in Houston, one of their biggest exercises is the Immersive, Simulated Environment programme run with BP. The programmeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purpose is to build teamwork, communication and cohesion in offshore operations on BPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rigs. For a week crews participate in a series of interconnected 20

simulations involving the bridge, engine room, crane, drill floor and emergency response teams. The programme culminates in a day called CHAOS – Combined Human And Operational Skills – an acronym with a double meaning. The crews are pressed through chaotic scenarios to challenge their abilities to work together and survive – or, conquer CHAOS. In the training centre, this is controlled chaos. However, life – as everyone in the Gulf region knows too well – deals its own form of natural chaos. Hurricane Harvey and the resulting flood was an absolutely surreal event in Houston and surrounding areas – in the moment, it felt like something out of a movie as the city literally drowned. The devastation wreaked was unprecedented and of historic proportions – it has now been dubbed a one-ina-thousand-year flood event. To put it in perspective, the National Weather Service added colours to their mapping key in order to

plot the rainfall – that is just how historic this event was. Beyond impossible to describe to those that did not live through it, it is even difficult to comprehend the impact of what has transpired. It was complete chaos which would, and continues to, require Combined Human And Operational Skills to survive and rebuild. The staff at Maersk Training’s Houston centre was fortunate to come through the storm safely. Unfortunately, several team members suffered severe damage to their homes and lost their vehicles. Jim, our IT manager, was scheduled to leave for vacation the week after the storm made landfall – his plans were, however, changed after the floodwaters crept into his home and engulfed his cars. Instead, he remained home to assess the damages and begin repair work. Others sought sanctuary outside of the threatened zone until Harvey had passed through and

returned home to an often dismal scene of destruction. SECONDARY DEVASTATION One team member evacuated with family, dogs, and as much as could fit in the rescue vessel, in this case a canoe. Like many in the city, their home would make it through Harvey’s initial downpour unscathed – unfortunately the city authorities were forced to release dangerously high waters from nearby reservoirs and the house was subsequently flooded. Again, the silver lining was the comradery that exists on the team – once the waters receded, a colleague was there to help with clean up. Crane instructor Johnny and training coordinator Jesus, also lost their vehicles during the flooding. Aside from loss of life, losing one’s home is likely one of the most devastating things any of us could ever endure emotionally – nothing could be more chaotic. A home is more than a building, it is more than walls, or the

furniture and items that fill it. Home is where one retreats to escape from hectic day to day life; it should be safe and secure, a place to seek refuge. After one’s home, in a commuter heavy city such as Houston, loss of a vehicle can be equally shocking. The loss of a car in Houston, a metroplex spread out over 26,000 square kilometres, with limited public transportation options, has a significance that is likely unparalleled in any other metroplex around the world. To put this in perspective, if Greater Houston were in Denmark it would account for 60% of its 43,000 square kilometres. No one disputes that what is lost is only material and what is most important is that no lives were lost or injuries suffered. Nonetheless, the devastation of losing one’s home, to have mother nature invade so callously and quietly wreak havoc on a lifetime’s worth of belongings and memories – for some, being left homeless – is a feeling that is hard

to understand or even describe with words.

natural force, the city and region expressed a never-quit-attitude.

The devastation is still being tallied and likely will not be completely understood until several years from now as the recovery will be one that may take up to a decade. It can be hard to stay positive during times like this, especially for those that have lost everything during the catastrophe.

And, it continues. The storm has passed, and the water has finally receded. The damage is done, the pain inflicted. It continues as the third month since landfall begins – it will continue for years to come. People are seeking out ways to help, standing in line to volunteer, bringing donations to shelters. The response of the people of Houston is a warm reminder of what humans are capable of accomplishing when faced with such chaos. Houston is truly in the midst of conquering chaos. #HoustonStrong

NEVER QUITTERS All that being said, the catastrophic damage and heartbreak will not be the lasting memory from the storm and subsequent flooding – it will be people’s resiliency in the face of chaos. Immediately, within the first few days of the flood, the communities and people embraced the opportunity to help their fellow man - even Houston’s neighbours from Louisiana sent their "Cajun Navy" rescue vessels to help with evacuations. The resiliency was almost immediate in the face of this unstoppable

The next issue of eSea, due next month, picks up where Kenneth’s article leaves off. It is crammed with stories about everyday normality in the US’s 4th largest city.

The Wind Box of Tricks In a world where wind is power, where the smallest adjustment is crucial, knowledge is survival. When you are stuck in a box at the top of a 70 meter pole in the middle of nowhere and you have to stretcher an injured colleague to safety, you don’t want to be thinking, ‘so how do we get out of this one?’ Wind engineers need to know not just the technical differences between a Siemens 2.3 and 3.6 or a Nordex, a MHI Vestas or the

Repower turbines, but the correct method of physically exiting. Even the smallest of differences could be dangerously debilitating.

t’s an area of training that has perhaps been over generic up to now. Practice hub rescues can be little more than a physical exercise, performed at height. Realizing this Maersk Training

in Aberdeen commissioned a simulator, believed to be the first of its kind, where specific models can be replicated to enable technicians to train in exactly the right conditions. With each manufacturer the placement of equipment differs perhaps creating further complications during a rescue. Furthermore in designing the simulator they didn’t stop at just the nacelle and hub areas, but also recreated rescue situations from the basement foundation level as well as the tower, yaw deck and even the blade. ‘It’s custom-built because we reacted to market pressures and customer wishes,’ says John Abate, Managing Director for Maersk Training in Aberdeen where they have recently

experienced the renewable energy sector grow dramatically to become 20% of their turnover. The arrival of the WTG – wind turbine generator – simulator compliments the HUET training pool, a working a heights tower and a wind turbine transition tower. It is the only centre in Scotland to be able to run all five modules of the Global Wind Organisation and Basic Safety Training at one location and within a week. At Maersk Training in Aberdeen they believe that in understanding the marketplace they have identified and solved a problem before it became an issue. In a world where wind is power, knowledge is survival.

The Favela Fella In a world where more twenty to forty year-old men than ever seem to be hirsute, David’s mass of red facial hair has still been a door opener in his current home town, Rio de Janeiro. Even before he opens his mouth people ask if he’s a Viking and team mates from soccer games in the favelas ask him to their homes to show the family ‘this man from Denmark.’

ell half from Denmark, the other half enables him to speak fluent Portuguese and is part of a fascinating family tale. ‘A happy accident,’ he calls it. His father is from Terceira, one of the twelve islands that make up the Azores, the lush Atlantic outpost of Portugal, about a third the way towards America. In the late sixties and early seventies Portugal was engaged in a colonial war that was its Vietnam. Fighting in Angola and Mozambique was a drain

on resources, both for money and people. It was a futile period in Portugal’s long history and David’s father chose not to take part. He moved to Denmark, met a girl and David was the second of their three children. They named him David Filipe Hansen Monteiro Paes, not knowing then that 27 years later it would be the longest in the Maersk Training staff address book; too large for the box IT had set aside.

experience working in somewhere I could actually see myself in ten years. Strange to start a life without old friends in a new place, very motivating.’ ‘I tell my friends, guys who take a lot of things for granted over in Denmark, you don’t know what poverty is, you don’t know what it is to struggle every day, to be people who are satisfied with what little they have. The first couple of months it was difficult trying to understand things, as always you have to get used to it, but now I appreciate my situation and respect the people, don’t take things for granted. It’s a lesson for life I think.’

It was this combination of circumstances that led him to Rio where he is a training analyst. ‘I was doing my bachelors’ degree in Brazilian Studies at Aarhus and saw that Maersk Training had a centre in Rio so contacted them hoping to do a semester in my final assignment. They said “yes come on down.” I stayed for seven months and then returned after I’d been back to Denmark to graduate.’

Rio has two sides to it, the good and the bad. It is beautiful and violent, but David says he feels safe because he takes precautions like knowing exactly where he is and what the limits are. That’s why he goes kickabout with friends in the favelas.

‘It’s different, a great experience and my first professional 26

‘If I had to have a picture on my wall to remind me of Brazil and it was between Copacabana or a favela, I’d take the favela – that’s Brazil, that’s Rio, the other side of the coin.’ David currently doesn’t live in Rio but in Duque de Caxias, a neighbouring but adjoining city, which is bigger than Rio and has a hundred thousand more people than Copenhagen. It is about a two hour bus ride from the office back in Rio. The journey triggers another Brazilian necessity for survival, patience, but he’s very comfortable with the lifestyle. Maybe it is his roots but it is pleasantly strange how life can turn full circle for the Portuguese Viking.

Top, clockwise: Reflective David on his balcony and, in shoes taking on the locals, inside and then out side. Finally on Copacabana being interviewed about the World Cup.

"You don’t know what poverty is, you don’t know what it is to struggle every day, to be people who are satisfied with what little they have."

Hamburgefintsiv

Name David Filipe Hansen Monteiro Paes Position Training Analyst Role Focal point for selling and booking Maersk Training’s Maritime, Crane, Drilling (IADC & IWCF), People Skills and Safety courses for clients such as Transocean and Shell Years in Maersk Training 2 years Previous job/s Sales Assistant at Superbrugsen; Warehouse Assistant at Bjarsø

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Subs R Us M

ixing the old with the new, experience with expectation is what the 21st Century is about. We’ve a world that is spinning round at just about the same speed* as it did for our great grandparents, but everything on it moves faster. Except that is the Danish postal service, and in fairness just about every other national mail. Today you can pay a supplement for an express service which is slower than the normal service was ten, even five years ago. In a ridiculous situation, it can be quicker and cheaper to buy something on Amazon, fill in the free message box, and get it delivered, than to buy a birthday card and a stamp. Online shopping has changed the world – you take the day off to be at home when the package, which you can trace from the

moment you click, arrives. In the meantime you use the free time go online and buy more things you can’t live without, but never needed. You then take more time at home to await delivery and so it goes. It is the new addiction.

Toys turn full circle, from being an educational play thing to being a qualification on a CV.

replaced by a screen shot, a star rating, the number currently available and the cost. Recently I took a trio aged from three to seven, into a branch of Denmark’s biggest toy stores. It was like keeping flies of a tray of sticky cakes. Perhaps already polluted by the fact that they expected toys to arrive in the post and to go straight from package to play, the two eldest left the shop with an armful of knights and animals. It was smash and grab, without the brick. They had to be recalled and made aware that there was normally a paying process to go through, which on this occasion after a glance at the price tags, I wasn’t prepared to do.

It is such big business that the utopia for all American kids, Toys R Us, couldn’t compete and went into administration last month with debts big enough to buy four US submarines. The significance of this unlikely purchase we’ll get round to. More fundamentally what it means is that for this and subsequent generations of kids, one of life’s great and invaluable joys is denied them. The thrill of being told, ‘no, wait for Christmas, it’s your birthday soon,’ the ecstasy of seeing and touching dreams, of lifting Barbies, teddies and train sets off shelves, is

THE MISSING LINK Everything in Denmark is pretty expensive and the temptation

to compare online prices was too tempting. There was a better solution. I popped them into one of those 10 kroner stores, bought three fly swats, and they spent the happiest of afternoons back home eradicating insects. When you think of it the swats had everything they needed. Using their hands, eyes and coordination, to hunt and terminate a foe. It was like a video game. Incidentally on the other side of this Toy Story, the same trio were recently staying for a weekend in a hotel inside one of Denmark’s leading tourist attractions; one where everything relates of one of the world’s most simplistic and developing of toys. As a treat they were each given a box of bricks and in their hotel room they happily set about recreating

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the image on the box. The threeyear-old, now four, couldn’t do it. There was a vital part of her set missing. Her mother went back to the shop in the complex to be told that she had to go online and send off for the missing part. ‘Because of company policy’ they could do nothing for her here at headquarters , which was also the theme park where thousands of kids come to enjoy the sheer pleasure of being kids. The mother is not a woman to be trifled with and after several journeys up and down the management ladder and being taken aside because she was creating an embarrassment, a begrudging compromise was arrived at – the shop manager opened another box and handed over the missing piece. The point here is that if one of the world’s

leading toy manufactures in the very heart of their empire immediately directs a live customer to the internet as the default mode, what is the chance for kids to have spontaneous joy?

the sun is out in the garden and football abandoned under a bush. This is where the submarine comes in. There’s training in the amazing dexterity being exercised. The US Navy know this, they don’t need soccer players. One of the costliest training programs they run is in getting sailors to operate periscopes. The equipment they use on the Virginia Class submarines costs $38,000, the training takes weeks, or used to. From now on the training takes hours because the new recruits come part-

THE END GAME Playing is like training. Those simple plastic bricks are a tremendous gift to the child – not for the hours they spend assembling, but for the lifelong gift of developing the mind. One of the most disturbing of trends is for a child to sit in front of a screen, console in hand when

trained, part of the PlayStation generation. The expensive scope system is replaced by an X-Box hand console, cost $29, online, or less ‘on special offer’ at Toys R Us. Not to be out done Britain’s Royal Navy also turns to the High Street for the odd part or two – worryingly their nuclear subs are run using Windows X, well not quite, a version which is called Submarine X. The worry is that Microsoft stopped issuing updates and giving support to the system in 2014. So what happens if the screen goes blank? I do hope the reboot and the launch buttons are significantly different.

* In 5.3 million years, the earth day will last 25 hours. Amazon and Toys R Us might both be shut.

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