Seabased has engaged Heidi Ødegården as Supply Chain Director. Heidi brings more than 25 years’ experience in Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Installation (EPCI) contracts including roles as manager of subcontractor deliveries, senior purchaser, assembly supervisor, and offshore operations coordinator. She has worked in India, China, Canada, the United States, and Europe.
Heidi’s current role includes globally sourcing the materials and services required to assemble the components for the turnkey wave energy parks in Seabased’s project pipeline. That includes finding high quality parts and materials located near planned projects so as to keep costs and lifecycle CO2 footprint low while potentially creating local jobs at the site. Heidi, who has held several roles in project management and worked as Health Safety Environment and Quality manager, is also overseeing safety and assembly documentation necessary for the company’s certification process towards DNVGL in preparation for industrial ramp-up.
Though she has several hats to wear as the company works through its certification process, that works for her. “When you do it for the team, it’s a different feeling than when some guy on the other side of the world says ‘You fit this box so you do this.’ I hate being in a box.“
“Heidi is a huge asset to the team,” said Seabased CEO Laurent Albert. “She’s very knowledgeable, very meticulous. There are a lot of details in this industry and she's excellent at keeping track of all of them. She also brings a lot of enthusiasm and humor.”
In addition to decades of experience, Heidi has an extensive network in the offshore industry that gives her a strong advantage in finding the best solutions. “I have a network who can deliver,” she said.
Heidi, who grew up in the coastal village of Grimstad, Norway, loves to be out on the waves, on a vessel loaded with heavy industrial equipment – such as tons of mooring chain - to be installed in the sea. She likes to be in the middle of the action.
“Chain is like water. It’s challenging to work with,” she said. “It can cause serious damage if you don’t know how to treat it. If you get a knot on the chain you’re in trouble. If it starts running on its own, you run too, it the opposite direction! I’m fascinated by the challenge of loading it in an organized and safe manner.”
Supply Chain Director Heidi Ødegården
Heidi in her chain loading days
Only about 3% of employees in offshore are women; it was less when Heidi started. When she was a girl, her mother gave her an interesting piece of advice: “She told me not to learn how to type, because if I did I would wind up as a secretary,” Heidi recalls. When she was working for a mooring company and the leadership refused her an offshore role because she wasn’t an engineer, Heidi paid for her own offshore basic safety training program and was rewarded with an operations coordinator job on an offshore project. In her career, the only traditionally female role she’s held was when she did a short stint as a flight attendant for a Spanish airline because she wanted to live in Spain and the airline industry had many of the same safety requirements the offshore industry had. She left that job when her former boss called her and said “I’m in a new company. It’s total chaos. Please come and help create some order back in my life.”
Throughout her career, Heidi found ways to open doors to the roles and work experiences she wanted. At Seabased, she continues to be a pioneer, as a leader in one of the world’s first ocean wave energy companies.
“I really love the team and the extreme diversity of the people,” Heidi said. “There’s no echo chamber. Everyone brings a unique perspective. And I like the opportunity to be at Seabased in this moment when it’s about to become a commercial reality and I can develop the systems in the way I think will benefit the project. Bringing my experience to a company in this stage of development in a new industry is a big challenge that I am enjoying taking on.”