Deep-sea diver, former soldier, entrepreneur, adventurer, ultra marathoner, summiter and innovator, Ian Hughes has spent his life pushing the envelope in whatever he does.
As chief operating officer at Hughes Subsea Services, an OEG Renewables company, he says “huge plans” lie ahead as he sets out to conquer more.
“Everyone says I have ADHD. I probably do. I’ve always been extremely hyperactive and always bouncing around. If so, it is my superpower.”
Superpower is the operative word to describe Ian. He has embroidered risk and danger throughout a life so rich with achievements and ambitions they are terrifying on paper.
His CV is exhausting. He’s built a multi-million-pound business twice – and sold it twice – worked with the biggest energy names in gas, renewables and nuclear, all while also bringing up his “life’s highlight”, his two children, Cerys and Owain, with his wife, Carolyne.
How has he fitted it all in?
In the same way he describes how he completes 100-mile-plus ultra marathons that take him 37 hours: “I just keep going.”
And if we still needed confirmation that Ian was the perfect subject for our “big interview” this issue, it came just as we went to print when he was named Maritime Personality of the Year at the Mersey Maritime Industry Awards 2024 (MMIA24).
On top of the world
A man of extremes, after a career of subsea engineering as a deep-sea diver, Ian is heading to the top of the world, attempting the Explorers Grand Slam – climbing the Seven Summits (the highest mountain peaks of each of the seven continents: Everest, Kilimanjaro, Denali, Aconcagua, Vinson Massif, Elbrus, Kosciuszko and Carstensz Pyramid) and skiing to the North and South Poles to raise money and awareness of the charity of his old army regiment, now The Rifles.
An ex-Royal Green Jacket, who signed up at 16, he has embraced its charity, Always a Rifleman, to raise awareness and money about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicides among ex-Riflemen.
His army career was short, but tackling his mountain expeditions for the small charity is important to him.
“There is more conflict and PTSD rates are rising. It is a small private charity that needs to be seen – if I can raise a bit of money and people are aware of it and what it does, all the better.”
Ian has already conquered four of the seven summits, the most recent being Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia in October, and has his sights set on Mount Everest in April 2025, followed by the South Pole in November or December next year.
“I have been to the bottom of the oceans and the North Sea, so wanted to go to the top of the mountains. And thought, why don’t I go to both poles too? I quite like the cold.”
But it’s not easy. “I really do suffer from altitude sickness and am a mess when I get to the top and have to be helped up there.
“I climbed Mont Blanc and didn’t have a problem. Then Mount Denali, I suffered horrendously at nearly 6,200m. It seems I have a problem at 5,500m.”
Now 55, he has a bucket list to tick off by 60. Seven Summits by 57, Grand Slam by 58, North Pole by 60. “Getting to the North Pole is extremely difficult, but where there is a will, there is a way.”
This could be Ian’s motto. Another superpower is making things work for him.
From soldier to deep-sea diver
Ian enjoyed the variety of the army but “I found myself getting into trouble, so thought it was a good time to get a career change”.
He read about deep-sea diving, thought it looked good and left.
In 1992, after jobs as a scaffolder and labourer, he got a loan from the Clydesdale Bank to train as a deep-sea diver, taking him to Fort William in Scotland for a three-month air diving course. A job on Humberside for Northern Divers came straight after.
He took his saturation divers course in Marseilles after a few years diving in the Middle East, Africa and India, securing work in the Middle East, then Africa.
“A manager asked me: ‘Why are you not working in the North Sea?’ He helped me get a job as a deep-sea saturation diver in the North Sea where I spent about eight years doing saturation diving for large oil companies.”
Hughes 1.0 In 2005, Ian decided to go it alone and set up Hughes Sub Surface Engineering in his garage.
“I hadn’t got the slightest clue how to run a business. I bought a dive spread from Ebay, a van, and a small boat, which were outside the house. My neighbours must have loved us.”
His first client was BAM Nuttall, expanding Liverpool docks.
“The first job we got was safety boat cover and worked with a joint contractor on site at that time. They gave us the job on the Twelve Quays project. We achieved more in the first night than had been achieved previously in three weeks, so they gave us the contract straight away. After that we won more jobs.”
His first blue chip job was with EON on Connah’s Quay, a gas-fired plant in Wales.
Ian then spotted a niche in offshore wind, securing work with Subocean in 2007, later with RWE on Rhyl Flats.
“I gave RWE my word we could be on site in two hours. I was called at 8pm and I had a full team of five on site by 10pm with a dive spread. They sent us offshore and didn’t realise we were off diving for 36 hours straight.
“We went back the next day and were asked to provide two teams for 24 hours cover for six months. That was the start of our renewable energy business, which took us from project to project for subsea support work. It grew and grew, and after 10 years we were turning over £20m a year. We were on five wind farm projects in 2012 all over Europe.
“The big gamechanger was Gwynt Y Mor, where we were working for RWE and the cablers. It was the first time we used a DP2 (dynamic positioning) vessel, when before it had been anchored vessels. It is the only project where everything was happening at the same time.”
Hughes had up to 250 people on Gwynt Y Mor and was on site until 2013.
“We spent two years diving every day doing various tasks. We did everything – cabling, mattress installation, crossings, scour removal, CPS assistance and maintenance, UXO [unexploded ordnance] works.”
The business won awards for its emergency response teams, including the Crown Estate Innovation Award with RWE.
London Array, Walney, Ormonde, West of Duddon Sands, offshore wind farms in Germany, are all in Hughes’ portfolio.
At its height, in 2016, James Fisher and Sons acquired Hughes Subsurface Engineering with Ian joining as subsea director for three years.
“We took the subsea business from £20m turnover to £150m in three years.”
Hughes 1.1 Ian had intended to retire at 50 “but I still felt in my 20s, so didn’t”.
“The NNG work was too big for us, so we partnered with Helix and turned it into a £35m job. It put Hughes Subsea back on the map.”
Work with Orsted, Vattenfall and others followed, and within 18 months, potential buyers came knocking “to see if I would sell again”.
OEG came “out of the blue”. In four months, Hughes Subsea Services was part of the OEG Group, working on the East Anglia Hub doing UXO and performing construction support services on Dogger Bank.
The company is currently undertaking an UXO identification, investigation and clearance campaign at the EA3 site, which started in March.
For the clearance work, the company will be using the DP2 vessel Glomar Wave which, after mobilisation, will begin disposing of the confirmed unexploded ordnance (cUXO) by using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and low-order detonation operations.
The first campaign will focus on clearing seven priority targets located within the wind turbine array site, followed by the remaining UXOs.
Besides the wind turbine array site, Hughes Subsea is also carrying out the same work along East Anglia Three’s nearshore section of the export cable route, near Bawdsey.
Ian’s next mission is to continue to build the brand for OEG in Taiwan, the US and Europe.
“We have a secure market in renewables, oil and gas, nuclear and marine civil engineering,” he said. “We cover 90% of the subsea sector of work.”
In North Sea oil and gas, most of Hughes’ work is ROV, vessel or daughter craft diving. For renewables, it is ROV, boulder or UXO clearance.
“We own two large daughter crafts and one smaller daughter craft. We are looking at subsea preparation and clearance – a lot of the new wind farm sites in Europe have boulder fields as well as UXO and we do boulder relocation and UXO work.
“We are setting up business focused on seabed clearance and always subsea work.
I want us to be first on everyone’s lips when they are looking for a company.”
The legacy One of Ian’s biggest sources of pride is that his children have followed in his footsteps. His son, Owain, 22, is a commercial diver and dive technician with mechanical and electrical engineering training. His daughter, Cerys, organises the crewing for Hughes Subsea Services.
He also takes great pride in becoming a full member of the International Marine Contractors Association and previously being on the committee of the Association of Diving Contractors “because it gave me a voice to change legislation”.
Raising money through his “adventures” is a big driver for Ian. He’s raised £3,000 for Always a Rifleman on each of the expeditions he’s done so far as part of the Explorers Grand Slam, but would like to raise more.
You can sponsor Ian on JustGiving at tinyurl.com/5bdv6rzb
Developing a diver’s sixth sense
Ian chose diving because it “sounded James Bondy” and he wanted to do something physical and outdoors.
“I never really looked at the danger side of it. I had been in the military and all the jobs I had had been classed as high risk, so I wasn’t worried about the risk.
“I loved being a diver because it is so diverse. You rarely do the same job, you get to travel and see the world – although much is going from the airport offshore – but I enjoyed the glamour of that, if you can call it that.
“I’ve been diving for 32 years and love it. You are left on your own to get a job done. You have to think how to fix jobs.
“A lot of the time you can’t see what you are doing. It is done by touch. Some of the offshore sites have such little vision because of the silty bottoms. It gives you a sixth sense how to work. You learn to use tools blind and when you can see them, life becomes easy.
“Working in the Humber when I started my career, everything two inches into the water you couldn’t see. We are doing highly technical engineering underwater, and you can’t see.
“The first time it is like the lights go off in the dark. You can’t see anything. You put a torch on your face but can’t even see that. It was before health and safety was as relevant. We took our gloves off and got shredded hands doing the work with bare hands.
“Time is a great trainer. Two years down the line I knew the principles and procedures. I was always keen to learn and research for myself to find out more to get skilled.
“Northern Divers were experienced divers who had been around for so many years, and the older guys explained what to do and how to use fingers for measurement. I have got a lot to thank them for in my early days.”
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