Meet Charlie Humphreys, Principal Engineer at ABL London

The team at ABL Group shares the passion, vision and values for working in energy and the world’s oceans, de-risking and driving the energy transition. We are driven by the idea that the best work is born from professionalism, diligence… and fun. You know ABL Group, but do you know our team?

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Give us a glimpse into your day-to-day work at ABL. What keeps you on your toes?

A complete cliché but the joy of marine warranty is that no two days are the same *really*. We support right across the project and product life cycle from early phase advisory, through design, fabrication, installation, to witnessing decommissioning at the end of asset life cycles.

We work with an extraordinary range of clients and contractors, covering activities from operations and maintenance at a single site using a small vessel to the largest heavy-lift ships operating across numerous locations. And across each scope we might cover document review, vessel suitability, attending operations and more.

For small projects, all of this might occur within a couple of weeks. Each project brings its own unique challenge, and providing an adaptable service to approach each with pragmatism in delivery of MWS to help clients and contractors deliver safe, robust and repeatable operations requires thought every time.

What drew you to the industry, and what keeps you passionate about it?

I was drawn to engineering and then the offshore industry by the incredible engineering challenge and scale of the human accomplishment in delivering the projects we are involved in.

Offshore wind continues to humble me as its size and scale continue to grow. I firmly believe we can all play a part in leaving the planet in a better state than we joined it for our children, and I believe clean energy and especially offshore wind is a cornerstone of how we will deliver that as we engineer our way to a more sustainable future.

Can you tell us about something exciting you are working on right now? 

I’m working across three offshore wind projects in the delivery phases. We have a great opportunity to synthesise the learning across each of these mega projects and help our clients deliver each more effectively than the previous.

What does the future of energy and oceans look like right now? 

In the energy market, it appears sustainable solutions are overtaking fossil-fuel-based approaches, and the market desire for sustainable solutions is overtaking the regulatory pressure to do so.

Offshore wind appears to be finding fresh stability after a few bumpy years. The successful delivery of current projects under installation is setting a credible benchmark for the next phase of development.

Whilst the headline ambitions of installed capacity are starting to grow again, it feels like the industry has calmed, and the exponential growth of projects and turbine size we saw in the late 20-teens has calmed to a focused determination to deliver at scale with maturing technology. All of this is great news for the future of oceans, especially as we start to see the benefits of biodiversity net-gain at offshore wind sites.

With record capacities awarded in this year’s AR7 and more to come in AR8 – what should developers look out for from a marine perspective to ensure their offshore wind project remains on course to delivery in an increasingly busy offshore construction space?

Supply chain; fabrication, ports, harbours and vessel availability. All of these key supply chain points are known bottlenecks and affect each project in its own way. Early engagement with the market is vital, but so is understanding the implications of the knock-on effects between each of these aspects, and something we love to help our clients understand!

Beyond the work, what makes you tick outside of the office?

I have a young family, and quality time spent outside in fresh air, being active whilst out in nature or in the sea, is all hugely important to us.

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More about Charlie

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