WATCHING THE WORLD 21 YEARS OF CHANGE IN THE DIVING SECTOR

With David Knott from London The International Association of Underwater Engineering Contractors is 21 years old this year. The association's retention of the AODC acronym from its days before 1989 as the Association of Offshore Diving Contractors, as opposed to the more logical Iauec, hints at industry changes over its short lifespan. AODC is now based in Beckenham, U.K., but took shape in 1972 at the Imperial Hotel, Great Yarmouth, where founder Tom Earls held the first meeting.

May 3, 1993

3 min read

The International Association of Underwater Engineering Contractors is 21 years old this year.

The association's retention of the AODC acronym from its days before 1989 as the Association of Offshore Diving Contractors, as opposed to the more logical Iauec, hints at industry changes over its short lifespan.

AODC is now based in Beckenham, U.K., but took shape in 1972 at the Imperial Hotel, Great Yarmouth, where founder Tom Earls held the first meeting.

Of the original 11 companies represented at that meeting, five were based in Great Yarmouth and only one each in Aberdeen and Stavanger.

"Our membership of 115 now includes a large number of companies in the Middle East and Asia," said Tom Hollobone, AODC secretary.

In the early days "...there was little to unify the U.K. diving companies until the Department of Trade and Industry moved to introduce diving regulations," Earls said.

NO COWBOYS

"It was the AODC's job to overcome the general view being fostered by the media that all diving companies were cowboys, taking irresponsible risks with the lives of their employees," Earls said.

AODC started producing annual statistics in 1974. Since 1979 there have been three diving deaths, all in the early 1980s. There have been none since 1984. AODC also helped draft the first U.K. diving regulations and has been involved with legislation ever since.

Malcolm Williams, AODC chairman in 1982-83 and 1989-91, recalled that U.K. diving in 1971 was largely confined to the shallow southern North Sea and involved mostly short, surface-oriented dives.

MORE EFFICIENT

Diving bells were in use, "...but the vast majority were employed on exploration rigs with little, if any, serious work being done," Williams said. "In fact, the most significant aspect of the industry was its inefficiency. Operators were paying, in real terms, much higher costs for diving than they do now, with very little meaningful work being achieved on the bottom."

The drive to improve started in the early 1970s and continues. In December, three Comex SA divers spent 43 days in a hyperbaric chamber in Marseille, testing hydrogen-based breathing mixtures. They set a record 2,300 ft for a simulated dive. Comex set the record for an actual dive, too, at 1,670 ft.

Efficiency improved so much, through more effective diving and the use of remotely operated vehicles, that the number of divers has fallen. AODC recorded 772 air and mixed gas divers in the U.K. sector in 1992, after a steady decline from a peak of 1,398 working in 1985.