Discipline
Civil Engineer, Expert Witness, Naval Architect
Specialisms
Offshore Wind and Renewables, Hydrodynamic Loadings, Wave Simulations, Mooring Analysis, Stability, Reliability and Probabilistic Analysis, Model Testing and Calibration, Seabed Scour, Structural Analyses, Jack-ups, Jackets, Semi-Submersibles, Ships and Barges, Vessel Cranes, FPSOs
Location
UK
About
Dr Rajapillai (Ahilan) Ahilan is leading the energy transition initiative at ABL Group, having previously been CEO of LOC Group. He was EVP of the Renewables Advisory Division of DNV GL, with strategic and operational responsibility for the world’s largest technical advisory firm in renewable energy formed by the merger of GL Garrad Hassan (of which he was President) and the renewables business of DNV. As President of GL Garrad Hassan, he led the world’s largest technical consulting firm entirely focused on renewables with >1000 staff. His experience spans both Oil & Gas and Renewables. Prior to that, his offshore oil & gas career spanning three decades was with GL Noble Denton, where he was President Americas, MD Europe, and MD Advanced Engineering Consulting. He is also a member of the Bank of England’s Decision Maker Panel.
With expertise in hydrodynamics, he has led projects which have set standards and established safety factors for jack-up site assessment, mooring systems (Convenor, ISO 19901-7 until 2006) and marine transportation. He helped develop the marine operations guidelines at industry-leading firm, Noble Denton. He has been an expert witness and technical advisor to lawyers in Norway, UAE and the UK on technically complex cases related to marine operations, drilling rigs and FPSOs. He is Chairman of the charity Marine Technology Trust which supports industrial placements in the marine industry for UK university students.
In addition to this, he is an Advisory Board Member of WavEC Offshore Renewables (Portugal) and was Non-Executive Director of a vertical axis wind turbine company. He is on the Advisory Board of the Leeds Institute of Fluid Dynamics and is an Advisor to EPSRC multi university research programmes in Wave Energy, Extreme Wave Loads, Digital Twins and Acoustics and was Guest Professor at Harbin Engineering University, China (2006-2010). He is now the Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Power and Energy Engineering at King’s College London
He holds a BSc (Leeds) and MS (Caltech) in Civil Engineering, a PhD (Cambridge) in Engineering Fluid Mechanics and an MBA (Imperial). He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of both the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology, and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020.