Seabased has engaged Jason Bayne as Director of Installation and Commissioning. Jason brings more than 20 years’ experience in subsea construction and installation globally, including project management and offshore execution for many projects that were the first of their kind in the maritime industry. That experience of industry firsts, breaking old paradigms, is one of the things that attracted him to Seabased.
“Three years ago, I was supporting Seabased on transport and installation scopes of work around the globe,” Jason said. “Seabased is a never-before-seen solution and I wanted to be part of that. It’s a really unique opportunity.”
Seabased CEO Laurent Albert noted that Jason is highly professionally versatile. “He has overseen installation in every kind of environment around the globe and he’s a creative thinker when it comes to iterating the process toward increased efficiency. He’s also an excellent team player.”
Jason, an American living in Norway, grew up on the water of the Great Lakes in the US, doing water sports. The father of four is still an active surfer and sailor.
“I’m much more comfortable on water than on land,” he said. “I’d live at sea. If Norway had a warmer climate, I’d be living on a floating house right now.”
His primary role at Seabased is to ensure the company has a cost effective, efficient, and environmentally sensitive transport and installation methodology for the commercial projects in its pipeline. The installation itself, he notes, is simple relative to other offshore construction since there’s no drilling of the seabed and the work can be done with light vessels.
With a BSME and MBA in Ocean Industries, Jason has worked both as an entrepreneur and for Fortune 500 companies, garnering experience in areas from Offshore Operations to Project Development and Technical Subsea Construction Development to Market Strategy. Over the years he’s had several personality tests to gauge whether he would be a good match for a given team. The results are always the same:
“I specialize in seeing the big picture,” he said. “I tend to see things holistically; I can spot anomalies.”
“But I’ve also had 10 years in executive level corporate functions where I’ve been exposed to how to reach clients through development of commercially viable solutions.“
He’s also very practical, and fits well with the Seabased team which approaches problem-solving in a straightforward, nuts-and-bolts fashion.
Jason Bayne Director of Installation and Commissioning
Seabased is one of the first companies to tackle the goal of using waves for utility-scale electrical generation; and one of the few from those early days to weather an investment climate that sat in the doldrums for years. Despite wave energy’s immense promise, skepticism that it would ever become commercially viable resulted in many investors shying away from the industry, so the funds for the tests and innovation needed to bring companies’ efforts to fruition weren’t available. Through it all, Seabased kept plugging away. By joining the team at this juncture, when investment in renewable energy is taking off, Jason has the opportunity to play a key role in helping shape the remaining stages of the certification and commercialization process so Seabased can take its place among the renewables fighting Climate Change. That’s a challenge he relishes.
“The management is fantastic,” he said. “They’re good at focusing, good at giving direction, and excellent at listening.”
“Seabased is in the first mover position and as soon as the certification milestone is achieved, Seabased will be ready to deploy all over the world,” he said. “It’s like Tesla: they had the development pains as a pioneer in new technology, but once they crossed the threshold of viability, a new standard was set, and the industry around the globe embraced it.”
Seabased is closing in on that breakthrough moment: One more first to add to Jason’s world first collection.