By 2017, Christophe Tam had already enjoyed a decades-long career in the subsea and pipelay engineering business, playing key roles in projects from Ireland to Africa.

So when then-employer Emas Offshore was forced out of business by a punishing downturn, the thought of retirement did cross his mind.

Soon, however, the veteran engineer and executive found his way into a new role — helping Saipem supplement its global footprint by targeting new business in the US Gulf of Mexico, where subsea tie-backs are an important segment. Tam became Saipem's vice president, new ventures for North America.

“I realised I was still passionate about the boat,” Tam says, referring to the former Emas vessel Constellation, which was acquired by the Italian contractor.

Long before he took on the challenges of offshore engineering, Tam dreamed of structures on land.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, as a teenager he cultivated a passion for architecture and in 1979 set off for the UK’s University of Liverpool to pursue it.

Disappointed by the amount of history and law involved, however, Tam made a shift that would shape his path for years to come by taking up civil engineering at University College London (UCL). There he studied under then-lecturer James Croll, who was emerging as a key figure in the early days of offshore engineering. At the time, the North Sea was still gaining momentum and engineering practices commonly used today were still being built from the ground up.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in structural engineering — he would later also earn a PhD — Tam plunged headlong into offshore research and development.

Key topics included the structural mechanics of cylindrical shell structures — relevant to tension-leg platforms — as well avoidance of pipeline buckling and collapse.

He also shuttled between UCL and subsea engineering player JP Kenny, where he worked as a part-time consultant alongside two other mentors, founders John Kenny and Paul Davies.

Pipeline project

In 1989 he joined JP Kenny full-time, kicking off with work for Irish utility Bord Gais Eireann on the Interconnector project, a 24-inch pipeline running across rugged seabeds between Scotland and Ireland.

Originally planned as a three-month gig, the work soon stretched to two years — an assignment in the course of which he also met his future wife. Other key projects included a new 22-inch pipeline spanning the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco, traversing tough underwater terrain with a high bidirectional current, as well as Shell’s Malampaya project in the Philippines, where earthquakes, turbidity flow and mudslides were prominent features.

In the following years the deep-water sector began to flourish. Tam opted to join Intec Engineering in Houston starting in 1998, working alongside founders including Willem Timmermans and Jim Gillespie.

Tam at first ran the company’s engineering department, which had built a reputation for pipeline work but was expanding to subsea and flow assurance jobs. Major projects there included BP’s Mardi Gras pipeline in the US Gulf, Texaco’s Agbami and Shell’s Bonga off Nigeria and ExxonMobil’s Kizomba off Angola.

At Intec, Tam became president for North America, then chief strategy officer and later chief operating officer from 2008 to 2009 as the company merged with WorleyParsons - now called Worley. In January 2010 Tam, along with Intec veterans Steve Hindmarsh and Graham Taylor, struck out on their own to form Peritus International, a new global offshore engineering house with backing from Australia’s Clough.

In May 2011, Tam joined Emas as senior vice president global engineering R&D with the goal of building up the company’s core talent, later rising to become regional head for the Americas and senior vice president for global business acquisition.

Constellation fascination

He was also “totally fascinated” by then-chief executive Lionel Lee’s push to build the customised construction vessel Constellation.

Emas did grow, with global engineering staff increasing from about 100 to over 400. Revenue was also on the rise from $100 million in 2011 to almost $500 million in 2015 as the company established relationships with clients that included four supermajors, Tam said.

But then in late 2014 the downturn began to take its toll and Emas' zeal for expansion met its match. “What we did not count on was a downturn that was that deep and that long,” he said.

Tam left the company in 2017 after its Chapter 11 filing, but later that year got talking with Saipem executives. That October he joined the company as vice president, new ventures for North America, and in 2018 the company acquired the Constellation.

Since then, the vessel has already carried out heavy-lift work in the Middle East and West Africa, and is now in Guyana slated to lay umbilicals for ExxonMobil’s Liza 1 development.

Saipem has subleased space to build a spoolbase in southern Mississippi and shortly plans to award an EPC deal for the buildout, which will include a main line to weld pipe.

Operations are targeted to start by the third quarter 2020.

Both inside and outside his day job Tam has found fulfilment in mentoring and training young engineers, pushing to hire and develop recent graduates, and last year helped organise a student design competition as part of a regional subsea tie-back conference.

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Tam not the retiring type as Saipem role grows