Making Waves
It seems our very Irish obsession with land has been to the detriment of the rich and varied opportunities at sea - 90% of Ireland‘s territory is underwater -
but finally investors are dipping their toes in the water and discovering a multi-billion euro range of possibilities, from the already buoyant fish farming sector, to the massive potential for sustainable energy production.
But before anyone takes the plunge, they need to know what exactly they’re getting into, and that’s where TechWorks Marine can help. This exciting company was founded in 2002 by Charlotte O’Kelly and Philip Trickett, and reflects the important shift in the Irish economy to knowledge-based enterprise.
O’Kelly, an oceanographer, and Trickett, a electronic engineer/oceanographer, saw an opportunity to provide monitoring systems for the marine industry. The company has developed offerings covering a range of areas encompassing tide and wave monitoring, water quality, meteorological monitoring and an algal bloom warning system for fish farms.
TechWorks’ sensors, which are designed to operate in harsh sea environments, transmit information via satellite to the firm data centres, and this is then relayed to clients via the web, providing fast and often vital data on changing conditions.
In the case of fish farms, for example, by monitoring temperature, salinity and oxygen levels, clients can take rapid action to save their stock from attack by disease, harmful algae or fish lice. “Historically if fish farmers turned up at work and all their fish were belly-up all they could say was ‘oops’, and that oops was costing them millions. So we can now give them an idea of what’s going in real time from the comfort of their office, it gives them time to react.
While monitoring systems have been in use for many years in maritime applications, O’Kelly said the company’s competitive advantage has come from being able to combine a variety of world-class sensors into one central data collection and transmission device, a ‘Black Box’.Clients include the EU commission, the Irish Marine Institute, the Martin Ryan Institute, Irish Seabed Survey, University College Dublin as well as various semi-state and private companies.
TechWorks provides a total service for its clients from designing and deploying the monitoring devices at sea, providing the information infrastructure to receive the data and organising maintenance when needed .“We’re also involved in off-shore ocean energy. One of our clients, Ocean Energy, makes electricity from wave power on the west coast near Spiddal. We measure data for them five times a second and deliver it in real time. Obviously that data would be less environmental, more engineering. We can tell them how much energy is being created by their turbine. It’s another huge growth market.”
The firm has benefited greatly from European Commission Framework funding and has also received financial assistance from the Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB), which took €50,000 refundable preference shares in the business in 2003. The business is currently an Enterprise Ireland client.
Participation in pan-European research programmes has been crucial to the firm’s development. “Being a technical business you have to have a finger in the research pie,” said O’Kelly. “We’ve three staff engaged fulltime in R&D and we’ve used the finance to enhance our existing technology.” The European Commission has proved a fertile hunting ground for TechWorks and O’Kelly is now also a registered evaluator for projects, providing her with further insight into how to manage framework programme projects.
“We are also invloved in the EU marine GMES (Global Monitoring Environment Security) project Mersea, which takes data from operational numerical models, real time live data like ours, and satellite imagery. All these data are used to produce data products which are used by rescue services, met. offices and shipping companies, to enable operational decision making in the case of oil spills accidents or efficient ship routing of large cargo ships.
“We’ve been involved in the Infomar survey which is mapping all of Ireland’s seabed resource.” TechWorks has just delivered a remotely operated underwater vehicle to the Infomear project team. About the size of a small suitcase, it’s a fascinating ROV (remotely operated vehicle) which can manoeuvre at four knots per hour through the water, relaying live camera images back to the surface, as well as other data and the ability to gather samples. It‘s controlled with a play station gamepad and virtual reality goggles. “We also rented one to Irish Lights recently – we were surveying a trawler that went down off Howth head - they wanted to know if it was a hazard to shipping. We also use the ROV’s to check our own equipment.”
O’Kelly is passionate about their business, and has done a lot to both learn about and push the new enterprise culture in Ireland. She is a member of several networking groups and sits on the board of Women in Technology and Science.
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