Former head of Technip Canada joins Kraken Robotics
Ocean industry expert Sam Allen joins St. John’s company as strategic adviser
Kraken Robotics Inc. went looking for experience and found it in someone whose old job might have made him a customer.
Kraken said Thursday that Sam Allen, who led Technip Canada from its inception in 1997 until 2012 and has over 30 years of experience in the offshore energy industry, is joining Kraken Robotics Inc. as its strategic adviser.
He’ll be targeting the international offshore energy market, with a focus on landing more pilot projects and converting projects to long-term, revenue-generating contracts, the company said in a news release.
Karl Kenney, president and CEO of Kraken, said the company continues to refine its tools and processes thanks to the lessons it learned through pilot projects like Oceanvision.
“Kraken has developed industry-leading underwater data acquisition and analytic tools that can provide ultrahigh definition images of subsea assets and infrastructure,” said Kenney in the release.
Kraken Robotics Inc. is headquartered in St. John’s, and has offices in Dartmouth, Toronto, Bremen and Rostock in Germany, and Boston.
The company’s next challenge is to apply artificial intelligence to analyze subsea data to not only monitor changes over time but to create predictive analytics data.
“We look forward to leveraging Sam’s experience and relationships to generate significant growth for our robotic services and data business.”
The release noted that during Allen’s tenure at Technip Canada the company grew to be the pre-eminent subsea construction company in the country.
Technip Canada focused on marine engineering and installations such as risers, flowlines, umbilicals and mooring chains, and became a centre of excellence in several areas.
Allen’s experience in this sector spans three decades.
After his stint leading Technip Canada, he moved to Perth, Australia, to head up Technip Oceania, a company of 750 people and multiple multi-year projects.
After the Perth assignment, he assumed the role of project director for a large integrated subsea-to-onshore facility project in Indonesia. He retired from Technip in 2018.
Allen said he has witnessed the power of underwater robotics — mainly remotely operated vehicles — in the offshore industry, and he expects the use of autonomous systems in the sector to grow significantly over the coming years.
“With a strong portfolio of ultra-high definition imaging data acquisition and analytic tools, Kraken has the potential to build a significant recurring revenue business,” he said.
Kraken is ranked as a Top 100 marine tech company by Marine Technology Reporter.