Phil McNabb
Senior Project Manager & Business Development
Q. How many years have you been in the industry?
A. 42 years offshore
Q. What is your educational background and training?
A. I was in the Navy 1970-1973 where I had basic scuba training. Then I went to commercial dive school at Ocean Corp. in Houston, Texas. By 1975 I was working in the oilfield, where I accumulated 26 years of experience before moving into management positions.
Q: What inspired you to get into this industry?
A. I knew ever since I was eight years old that I wanted to be a deep-sea diver. One night a week my grandmother allowed me to stay up and watch a television show called Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges, and ever since then I wanted to dive.
Q. What roles have you held?
A. I started as a tender after I attended dive school for about six months, and then came up through the ranks to Diver 1. I then transitioned into supervisor and superintendent roles for offshore projects. Altogether I have 26 years of experience with offshore projects. For the past 18 years, I’ve held management positions, including operations manager, estimating manager and project/construction manager. I got my start with management as operations manager for the Oceaneering atmospheric diving systems (ADS) group.
Q. What are the last three major positions (where and responsibilities)?
Offshore Company Rep./Consultant
- Power Performance, Inc.
- Lafayette, Louisiana, May 2016-November 2018
- On vessel responsible for overseeing HSE, project completion per contract and day-to-day contact between contractor and client
Senior Project Manager
- Surf Subsea, Inc.
Mexico, April 2015-November 2015
Surface diving, ROV work and topside construction
Offshore Construction Manager (land-based)
- Oceaneering International
Angola, West Africa, December 2011-April 2015
Managing deep water ROV vessels
Q. What is your operations experience?
A. With 26 years of offshore experience, I have been a part of different project types, including:
- Diving: Heavy, subsea and pipeline construction diving projects
- IMR projects
- Deepwater: Managing ROV boats
- Project Management: Topside construction projects
I was also the superintendent on the Chevron Genesis (deep water spar structure) project in 2011. As superintendent, I oversaw surface supply diving, diving in the atmospheric diving suit (ADS), the SAT diving system and a crew of riggers and welders.
Q. Can you share one of your most memorable work experiences?
A. I got to make a 2,200-foot dive in the standby WASP atmosphere diving suit. With over 20 years of experience diving, my stats are also memorable:
- 230 feet air diving
- 325 feet surface gas diving (with Coast Guard variance)
- 470 feet SAT diving
- 2200 feet One Atmosphere suit (ADS)
Q. What do you like best about working in this industry?
A. The best part was the diving, now it’s working with people. You run across solid, good people in the oil field from a range of disciplines from riggers and deckhands to engineers and high-level technicians. It’s an industry to me that draws superior individuals.
Q. What are the most rewarding and challenging aspects of your job?
A. The most rewarding part of my job at this point is when a project is safely planned and executed, as well as being profitable. There’s satisfaction when you’re part of a project from the planning to management offshore to completion. The challenging aspect is managing all the different and very talented individuals.
Q.How can your expertise support and help Hydra’s clientele?
A. We’re taking a different slant to business development and project management. Other companies have sales people call a client before handing the project over to project managers. At Hydra, clients only have one point of contact: me. I’m the guy who will be calling and I’m the guy who will also be managing the project. I know the work because I have done the work, run the project as an offshore superintendent and managed the project as a PM, so clients benefit having me on the project looking out for their best interest from the beginning.