#6 Chris McDade - Talks about the Benefits of their new Job

Yeah, no worries. Thanks very much, Gordon, for having us along. I should really thank my predecessor Ian for volunteering me for this - then in the sunset and I've been dropped in it. So yeah, thank you. My name's Chris McDade. I head up operations for Teekay Gas here in Glasgow. My actual title is Vice President Gas Operations. The reason it's Gas Operations and not Gas Fleet or anything like that is because as well as the LNG vessels that we have, we also have a terminal in Bahrain as well. So I'm responsible for that section of the business too.

When you're in high school, you don't really know what you want to do. I kind of kicked around the idea of going into the Armed Forces - at one point I was even thinking of the RAF. It was my grandfather - or my second cousin, I should say - who'd started an engineering cadetship. He was a year ahead of me. He'd started with Maersk at the time. My granddad suggested it and I thought, yeah, okay, that sounds good. At that time it was only engineering or deck that you could do, and it was literally a tick in the box. Me being me, I didn't really fancy getting my hands dirty or working in a big monkey engine room, so I decided to go along the deck officer route. My grandfather's brother, who was a steward on the whisky boats that used to go between the Clyde and Canada, when I told him I picked deck - and it was his grandson John who'd obviously gone the engineer route - he was like, 'just as well, son, because engineers call deck officers sales officers, but they aren't, right?' He was quite happy about that. So yeah, started in 1997 as a squeaky-voiced third cadet. I went with Clyde Marine Training, but at that time they were responsible for Maersk. When you were doing it, you don't actually pick the company - you can put your preference. My first choice was Maersk, second was Blue Funnel Line, which was like a banana company that ran refrigerated cargoes. And I got Maersk because my cousin was in it. So I literally fell into the oil and gas sphere. Sat in the halls of residence canteen at the nautical college on a Monday in September, getting your name read out - 'Maersk' - stood up, went and got the company tie, and that was it.

One of the guys who was sat next to me, still a really good friend now - he's got an offshore company - and we still slag him for it that he was nearly crying when he got told he was working for a company in the North Sea and wasn't getting to travel the world. But I suppose your second cousin had a few beers - the last I heard from him he's out working for the Sultan of Oman on private yachts. It's funny how careers sort of divert, because we go from one end and he went to Maersk.

I completed my cadetship with Maersk. It was a great company to work with - lots of old tonnage. My first ship was a 33-year-old product tanker down in East Africa, which was an absolute medicine. Nothing on it was automated - all manual valves. But the good thing about that, in hindsight, it really allowed you to learn your craft about tanker operations. When you were stripping out the tanks and the levels were getting to the bottom, with manual valves we used to lift up the Butterworth plate with a heliograph - a shiny mirror they used to attract fish - and reflect the sun down into the tank to see the elephant's foot where the suction of the pump was. You could see the effect as someone closed the valve. That was really good experience when you eventually moved into new tonnage with remote control - you understand the impact you're having because you've actually seen it. As a first-trip cadet, you're never going to get experience like that again. So I did that, and in 2001 Maersk was taken over or joined with Exxon, so it became ExxonMaersk. Exxon were extremely squeamish about having tonnage attached to them, so they were getting rid of ships. My training officer down in London said, 'look, if you can get something else, we won't hold you to your two-year contract.' Very fortunately for me, BP were going through a huge fleet expansion. I fired off an email to the man who did the hiring and got a job immediately - no messing around. Did some paperwork and then joined my first ship as third mate probably a week later down in Australia. I started with BP in April 2002, initially on the oil fleet. My first BP ship was the British Skill, built in Belfast. It was really well built - almost like a castle. It was one of the last BP tankers ever built in the UK. Nice ship, going between the Gulf and Australia. Then I did two trips on the oil side, and then moved over to gas, where I stayed my entire career with BP. Moved over to the Trader class, which were membrane ships trading between Arabian Gulf to Spain - Barcelona, Cartagena - and then switched to Trinidad's East Coast. In 2009, moved over to upstream and production. A guy I was in college with had moved over and was working on the Savannah Voyager, which was a cylindrical FPSO in the North Sea - the first of its kind. It was designed to go into fields with only a couple of years' life, so it wasn't worth putting in all the infrastructure. It would suck up all the oil and then be towed off to another field, like a hummingbird. He asked if I fancied it. I had the most technical interview I've ever had in my life - even to this day I don't know how I passed. I'd been working in LNG since 2003, hadn't been near an oil vessel, and they threw a diagram of this cylindrical FPSO at me and asked how I'd load it and discharge it, including stability calculations for something completely unique.

I'll run through the whole BP lot. I did two trips on the oil side with BP - the Skill and the Lotto, which was a newbuild coming out of Japan, an Aframax. Then I moved over to gas, where I stayed my entire career with BP. Moved to the Trader class - membrane ships trading mainly between Arabian Gulf and Spain, then Trinidad to East Coast. By that time I actually saw a loading in Trinidad discharging at a terminal called Cove Point, which these days is now an export terminal - it shows you what's happened in terms of the LNG cycle. So yes, the gas got me, got my old man's, and then in 2009 moved over to upstream and production.

There's a lot that comes from the media perception of the oil industry. Obviously you've got STCW and ISM and all these things that govern shipping, but then in the British sector particularly you've got the Health and Safety Executive, which are no joke. They're no joke coming from the Cullen Inquiry following the Piper Alpha disaster - the sort of standards they've got to protect people, and that's what it is. So it was a huge, really steep learning curve, but something that was incredibly enjoyable. It was a really difficult job just getting yourself up to that standard that was expected from an offshore point of view.

My personal life is a bit different because my wife's in the same industry - we actually met when we were cadets in college. So I'm quite fortunate in that I don't have one of these 'homely wives' expecting you to be home with pressure to leave deep sea. I never had that. The main thing really was - don't get me wrong, the leave rotation was considerably better, two weeks on, three weeks off, which was fantastic at that time. It was just more of a new challenge, something I'd not done before. There wasn't a conscious decision to leave shipping - no threat of redundancy, no talk of shrinking the fleet. I was coming from a very comfortable, stable company, but this just came up. It was something a bit different, and similar to when I chose Maersk, doing that opened up so many more opportunities along the way and shaped the path to the position I'm in now. You have that other strand to your CV where you've got something a bit different from your average person who's been in shipping.

I was in the Royal Navy Reserve since 2009, which was roughly when I came into offshore. Because with the leave rotation - three weeks off, fantastic - you could plan stuff. It was something I always fancied doing, and again it was more of a challenge - I wanted to see if I could do it.

See if I could actually pass my commission - go down and sit the Admiralty interview boards, and then go to Dartmouth BRNC and pass everything you have to pass as part of your initial naval officer training. Because it's not easy. Days gone by, if you were a merchant navy master, you'd basically walk into the Navy - 'here's your left-handed bread and your swords, welcome aboard.' Then they changed it, and rightly so, because it's a different skill set. You had to follow the same process as everyone else. Upon passing your initial naval training and your Fleet boards - you also have to do a mini draft for the Navy, so you do your Fleet time which is generally on a capital ship like an LPD or an LPH - and then come back and be examined by a captain and two commanders on various operational aspects. Great time, really enjoyed it, absolutely fantastic, done some interesting stuff. But when I got appointed to being Vice President with Teekay, I can't commit to mobilizing - I can't just leave the company for six months. It's not fair in the Navy and it's not fair in Teekay, so I made the decision to resign my commission. Lots of people do the two-week commitment, which is fine, but for me it was a personal choice - I didn't think it was right taking the money and not being able to go if the balloon went up.

Yeah, I would definitely say so. You do a lot of stuff that's kind of unconscious with the RN in terms of leadership and management. A lot of civilian employers will be reluctant to take people from the Armed Forces on because there's this bias that they think it's going to be like the old-fashioned sergeant major barking orders. It's so far removed from that. They give you a lot of leadership training and they talk about something that stays with me - the flex in your leadership style. You can go into what they call warfighting mode, where it's very direct: 'you will do this, I want this done by then.' And then the other side is much more collaborative, bringing people along with you. There's times for both. If I'm manning an ERT dealing with a major incident on one of our vessels, that's the time for direct leadership - 'this has to happen and it has to happen quickly.' But on normal times, it's much more collaborative. Doing that for over ten years gave me both sides of the coin. I'm biased, but I would definitely recommend it. In the branch I worked in - amphibious warfare - it used to be exclusively merchant navy guys, so you meet people from all facets of the industry, Shell, Chevron, and you meet them when you've quite literally got a different hat on. All those touch points with the industry - I think it's completely worthwhile.

I wouldn't say it's encouraged, but crucially it's not discouraged. BP were signed up to what used to be called the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme - now they've got various awards for employment of choice for the Armed Forces: bronze, silver, gold. If you're a gold employer, you allow time for your people to go and do their reserve service. So BP would allow that time. It wasn't openly encouraged but not discouraged, and I think that's the key thing. There are some employers out there who think, 'I need to release this person for two weeks to go away and do their annual commitment' - but most big organizations do support it rather than encourage it.

Yeah, so a couple of steps before that. I was with SBM Offshore for a year - the same guy who phoned me about the North Sea job had moved to BP Angola. He was out in Singapore standing by an FPSO conversion and phoned me again: 'listen, there's a job coming up, I think you really want to have a look at it.' It was an incredibly exciting project - a 2.4 ultra-deepwater FPSO, never been done before, first of its kind. Everything was designed from the ground up - the ROVs, how to install the subsea section. It was the most complex subsea construction I'd done at the time. This was in 2014. I moved to Singapore for two years doing the construction and commissioning. It was gigantic - the logistics involved. Something like a two-billion-dollar capex just to get to one installation, and it was BP's biggest project at the time. Absolutely brilliant, what a place to work, working back with BP. Still that really high-level standard because it was all offshore upstream operations. Then went to work in Luanda with it as well - two years in Angola, splitting time between Luanda, back in the UK, and offshore. Two years is about the limit anyone can work in Angola - the corporate term is a 'challenge.' Because of the element of corruption, and BP's stance on that was absolutely firm no, which then caused problems. It's little things - everyone laughs about going through the Suez Canal, colloquially called the Marlboro Canal because you have to push out cigarettes to the pilots. It's the same in West Africa. Not briefcases full of money to win contracts, but little things like gifts. The standpoint from UK bribery law was absolutely not, which then made things tough - getting technicians into the country, getting spares and stores out to the FPSO. A tough place to work. Then I was approached by a consultancy company back in Singapore - London Offshore Consultants - to do consultancy work on FPSO and LNG stuff, which was getting ramped up. So I went back to Singapore, probably 'Asia for beginners' - such an easy place to work. Did that for two years. During that time, incredibly interesting - I was involved in commissioning three LNG terminals down in Australia at Gladstone: GLNG and QCLNG at Curtis Island. I was there representing insurance to make sure that because it was a turnkey project handed over between the builders and the operations team, everything was managed correctly.

So yeah, I was down at Curtis Island over Christmas. I went down there in December - it was only meant to be for two weeks, it's never two weeks, it never goes to plan. I was there for Christmas, and it really is the back end of nowhere down at Gladstone. I was staying in these self-catering executive apartments. I was meant to fly back to the UK because my wife was still in Glasgow - she was still home, I was away for Christmas, and obviously that was tough. When I came back from working, there was a little letter posted through my door. I was actually talking to my wife at the time reading this - it was for those who are by themselves over Christmas, the Salvation Army were having a drop-in...

So you want to go for your Christmas dinner, and she was killing herself saying you should go, please go. You're in the homeless population in Gladstone. But fortunately the insurance manager and the construction manager invited me around to their house for Christmas, so that was quite good. Barbecue, I wasn't sat there by myself, you know, pulling a cracker for one. I think it feels like Christmas when you're in Australia, it's just totally different, so it almost doesn't feel like you're missing it. I remember one of the local, he's actually a Welsh guy, he would decorate this thing that would only come out once a year. It had like a kind of flatbed on it and they built a float there, and used to get a police escort to drive it around because it's a very small town, like 'what the hell is going on here.' So I did that to the LNG terminals, still working there. Done some offshore construction campaign work as well, which is interesting. Riser replacements in the Gulf of Thailand, which is considerably different from working in the North Sea. But like everything, all things come to an end. My wife was still back in the UK and she wanted us back home after doing all these different jobs in Luanda. And the job came up with Teekay in Glasgow for looking after the team as an LNG assurance manager, and applied, was successful, and then moved back to the UK, back to Glasgow in 2016.

But largely it was that four to five years of essentially project-based work. Pretty much, sometimes I suppose it's quite a good transition, right? Because a lot of people, when you come direct from sea into a town office, it's a huge cultural shift. Whereas the way it was, by complete accident, it wasn't by design, I sort of eased myself into it. Moving from sailing to offshore, into construction and commissioning, and then consultancy, which even though it's based in the office, you do spend a lot of time out on jobs. Because ultimately as a consultant, that's where you make good money. The company makes money for you being in attendance somewhere. So it was that sort of mixture between sea or shore, whatever you want to describe it. You always hear so many people when they talk about coming ashore, and quite often it doesn't work for them and they go back within a year. A lot of people coming ashore don't really understand. Maybe the company they're applying for is a bit reluctant, for you in your position when you're bringing people in.

It's funny, this exact circumstance is currently happening right now. We had a guy who actually sailed with when I was a Second Engineer and he was Fourth Engineer, with OSG, you know, like a million years ago. And he was a sales chief engineer. He approached about coming ashore. The advice is, you can't really give advice. You can explain it, right, as to what it's going to be like, and the fact that it's a big change. But until that person actually does it, or they come behind the curtain and they're now working from a shore point of view, you can't describe it until they're actually doing it. And it's like everything, as a risk. When from a shore point of view you take someone that has no shore experience but they've got an incredible background, they are such an asset to the company. When you get someone like this chief engineer, LNG, done a lot of stuff, to get them into the technical team, you know, it's great. They've got a lot of knowledge, a lot of input. They immediately have buy-in from the seafarers because they're talking to a chief engineer. But sadly, it's not for everyone. Exactly as you've described, he's done it for a year, he's gone back to sea. It's not that he doesn't like working ashore for Teekay, he just wants to go back to sea. It's not for him. It's a pity from us because obviously you take time onboarding people and getting them into the company. But it's a risk you continually have to take, because it brings that operational experience.

Yeah. That's something that actually, yeah, we've been discussing, and the catalyst for that is the situation I've just described there. Teekay used to have graduate programs, so they would take guys that come from a naval architecture background, come in exactly like that, and they would go through various hoops before they eventually made it up to vessel manager. So what we're looking at doing is one, reinvigorating that program, not only just for graduates but also for our engineers that are at sea, to give them an opportunity to come in. And then the other one as well that we're looking at is short-term requirements. So we've obviously went through a huge fleet expansion program with ships coming out left, right, and centre, which puts a huge burden on the operational staff. So we're looking to get some of the senior engineers from sea and get them into the office to give them a bit of a taste of the office, whether it's six months or twelve months or whatever the case may be. And then it allows them to sort of dip their toe in the water and see actually if it's for them. Because some of the people that we have taken in on short-term requirements, which is normally an HSEQ function, quite a few of them have actually stayed. So we had one chap who was in shore-based HSEQ, they moved into fleet support officer, and then it's hoped that in time that sort of route will then move up to vessel management. Yeah, so it's a good way for us. It's also great that it gives seafarers an opportunity to move ashore and stay in the same company without having to take drastic steps.

I think most people that go into any sort of disciplined, ranked, structured career, whether it's the armed forces, police, merchant navy, what I found, because as you're going through it, it's tiered. So you've always got that next rank to get to. So it's almost built into you that you do that. Now maybe that's just me and not everyone's experience, but I think you can't help but be ambitious in the career that you're in. Because right from the start, you know, you start as a deck cadet, next step third mate, all the way up to master. So it's laid out for you already. And if you've done it for so long, it's just ingrained in you. So you're always looking for that, the next step or next challenge or something along those kind of lines.

It's hard for me to comment because obviously it was happening to me. So I suppose you would really need to ask Ian. From the background, from the projects that you've worked on, everything's very much results-driven. So you know, set a goal and achieve it, and it's that constant, you're always looking to achieve, continuous improvement, make something better. So I came into assurance about some of our operations, and yeah, okay, how can I make it better? Right, you do that. And that's what sort of identified in me, because I was banging the drum about competence, right? So obviously that's a big thing for our industry, and we're looking to mitigate experience matrices which have... with several LNG ships. So we're looking to sort of mitigate competence with experience. So I was banging that particular drum, and at the time Teekay decided that they wanted someone to head up Marine HR from an operational background. So I was selected for that. So that's how I moved from LNG assurance manager over to head up Marine HR. And it required a complete overhaul of how we did things. And this was under the backdrop of going from like 12 LNG vessels to 44, with a huge manning campaign to get people in, trained, competent. And basically, I delivered, that's the long and short of it. Because manning is incredibly high-profile within any organisation, and because it's the people that are on the ships, and it's somewhat the forgotten aspect. Everybody concentrates on operations and the technical side of things. But from a shore point of view, the vessel manager is not fixing an engine when something's went down. It's the people onboard that are fixing that. And if you get that wrong, everything will just come down like cards.

It's not just firefighting, 'we need all these people.' You also need to think longer-term and strategic. Where do we want to be in five years? That's when you're looking at cadet programs and how to push people up, ensuring we have a pipeline rolling through. You can't have people stuck in rank. When you move from an expanding fleet to a stationary fleet, you need to think of other opportunities. So again, successful doing that, and then the position came up for fleet director. A lot of these jobs, interestingly enough, it's not applied or anything like that, that was the exception with Marine HR. Everything else has been, 'by the way, Chris.' One of the fleet directors left, 'get in and go fix something else.' Amazes me why people think that's a surprise. So yeah, it was the same for fleet director. One of the guys left to pick up a position in Singapore, and I got a phone call when he handed in his resignation, my boss saying, 'Right, we're moving you in to deal with that.' Teekay is not the type of company, but you hear of companies like BP, Chevron, they identify people as high performers and move them around the organisation. Teekay, although from the outside it looks like a massive company, it's really not. It's actually quite small. In Glasgow we have 106 people working in ops. We have a footprint in Manila and Mumbai, and corporate in Vancouver. It's very much like a family company. It was founded by Torben Karlshøj, who started it himself and his family were involved, and that ethos is still kind of there.

I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head. I'm just me, I'm not saying I'm right, but when you're promoting people from within, it just means that people want to buy into it and they're all about it. And it's a fairly young office when you think about it, the average age.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And see the thing, I'm a big fan of promoting from within, probably to the annoyance of our own recruitment. But I think you want people to be successful. You want people to come in at vessel manager level, or whatever the case is, and there is opportunities to move around and do different things. You want them to remain in the organisation and you want them to move up. Not everyone can set the world on fire, right? You're going to have people that are happy doing whatever they're doing, and that's fine. But you're also going to have people that are ambitious and they want to sort of move up. And being able to retain that, well, that's the challenge for me for HR as well, to keep people within the company. But yeah, you absolutely want to do that. Our view on this is if we can help it, we would never bring in anyone at senior level. That would always be from within, because it's such a risk when you bring someone in externally. It can really, really be disruptive. In the same way, if you get the right candidate it can be really good, but it is such a gamble. Moreover than that, if people within the company see that 'I'm not good enough' and you're bringing in someone external, it's not a feeling on them, it's actually a feeling on the organisation that we've not developed them enough to be in a position ready to take the next step. I probably shouldn't say it, but...

It's not, no. I was only appointed in June, but I took over... particularly not under the backdrop of COVID. I don't think that there's not one. There's the standout parts in your career that you think, yeah, that was really good. The BP Angola one, in particular, the sail-away, that was really satisfying. The ship coming out of the yards under its own power for a couple of hours. And then first oil on the PSVN, that was quite special. Then as well with Dallas, the famous 'Dallas Blaster.' Little moments like that, you think, and to be honest, it's not so much the process, it's the people around it, right? So you'd remember the guy who was sat next to me, Clay Gold, he lives in Thailand. I'm going to go over to Singapore. Him and I are in the control room and that happened through it. I suppose really the offshore campaigns. The things that I've described to you, because I mean there's loads of stuff. The other sort of standout career highlights, it sort of creeps up on you and you just have a little bit of a think and you think, 'Oh yeah, well, I remember that.'

Well, I mean the big thing, like everyone knows, sustainability and what that's going to look like for 2030, 2050. So there's a lot of work going into what is next for Teekay. Obviously I'm very much focused on the gas side of things, and LNG is considered, whether people agree or disagree, a clean fuel and it is considered to be a gateway fuel as ships move into various other means of propulsion and fuel coming into 2030, 2050. BP, for instance, already stated that they're going to treble the LNG output. So in terms of future for us and sustainability, we're in really good shape. We've went through fleet expansion and it's good to take a bit of a breath after having done all that. It's been frantic, getting all these ships coming out. And it's not just your bog-standard LNG vessels, you have the whole LNG carrier in the Arctic, never been done before, and that came with its own challenges. What's next for us, I can't say too much, but those big tenders coming out that we're going to be getting involved in. So hopefully we'll be going in for another period of expansion in the coming years. But again, the expansion has to be right for the business, it has to have the right risk profile and the correct investment. What I can say is there's certain ones that we absolutely bowed out of. Mozambique LNG, not for us, the risk profile's quite high. And back up in the Arctic, we've already got six vessels up there. Like all good businesses, you like to spread the risk. So rather than having all your eggs in the Arctic basket or all your eggs in the Africa basket, it's important to spread that around. For us, obviously we'll be looking along the lines of conventional LNG stuff, that's always going to be the case. But again, this is part of this 2030 strategy. What else do we want to be involved in? We've got the Bahrain terminal, which is an offshore re-gas unit with an FSU. Is that something we want to be getting involved in as well? Probably. Gas to power, look to get involved in that. But again, it has to be the right project. The other thing is the small-scale LNG, which we actually are involved in. We do have ethylene carriers as well. Will there be any plans to move to Vancouver? No, no. From the corporate side, our boss is out there, he's the CEO, and then you've got the boards and all that. So that's how they are at the moment. No plans. It's a nice place to visit, but no plans to move.

I wouldn't say there's one particular standout person. And the reason is because you move around, right? Particularly when you're sailing, you'll work with some incredible captains and some incredible engineers. So when you're at junior level and you work with people that have that sort of influence, because at that point it's them that instill the professional standard. And you look to them and think, 'Actually, that's what I want to be.' So there's captains I've sailed with in BP, incredible guys, really professional, loads of integrity, do things right, say what they do, do what they say, walk the talk. Same in BP Angola, loads of incredibly professional people. Even moving to LOC, my old boss Nick Caslam as well, big influence. Super knowledgeable, always wanted to do the right thing, do the best job that you possibly could. So you meet all these different people along your career that really do influence you. At the time you don't think, 'Oh, I've been really influenced by you,' but when you look back on it, it's these guys that sort of instill that level of professionalism. And it's hoped that I do the same on other people that you come into contact with. It is different when you move around because you're not working with the same people all the time. That can be an advantage or a disadvantage. In the same way, you see some really good examples, you see some absolute zeros, right?

Yeah. I shouldn't have really said that. You never stay with Teekay, so no, no, no. I do remember when I was sailing and thinking, if I end up staying here my entire career, I'm going to turn into some of these guys. I don't know what I'll get you for Christmas.

You know, I remember the date that I joined. It was on the 4th of January, 1998. It was in a place called Djibouti. I got a phone call, I think it was like December the 20th, to the London office to say, 'Right, Chris, you're joining the Shabbonai, you're joining in Djibouti. Have you got a passport? Here's your flight details.' And I came off the phone and my mum's like, 'Oh, well, where are you going?' I was like, 'Oh, I have no idea.' Mostly the days before smartphones and all this stuff, had to get an atlas and find out where Djibouti is. It's in East Africa, for those that don't know, it's in the Horn of Africa. So I joined there in three days in Djibouti, and joined this ship. And I remember walking along the jetty wall and looking at this thing, thinking, 'How the hell have I ended up here?' Squeaky voice, 17-year-old from Lindsay, is in East Africa about to join this thing. That was more of a reason, that's my first memory of that.

Thanks very much.