Seabed: Getting to the Bottom of Things

In the offshore and onshore industry, innovations are introduced in rapid succession. Not only is the need for high-quality equipment within the offshore and onshore industry expanding, but demand for suppliers’ knowledge and services related to accurate instruments used for positioning, bottom sampling, data acquisition, bathymetry and other practices is also increasing.<P>

Seabed is specialised intechnical services for the development and implementation of hardware and software. The company represents several high-quality instruments, GPS equipment and more. In particular, it is involved with hydrographic survey projects, the dredging industry, offshore industry, port authorities and government organisations. How do we get to the bottom of things

History
Seabed was founded in 2004 with three employees and a product range of about 20 products. The organisation now consists of about 20 people and offers over 40 different products, a unique combination of technical knowledge, practical experience and total system integration to an expanding market. ?

The Seabed Philosophy
Seabed aims for the perfect balance in sales, support and engineering. The company offers a combination of technical knowledge, practical experience and a broad sales network to support its clients. It has a young, professional team with a large diversity of education and expertise, who contribute to its high-quality product development, support and engineering.

Product Range
To be able to satisfy the specific needs of its clients, Seabed offers a large number of products and services that can be easily implemented. The solutions Seabed provides are classified in seven different categories, discussed below.

Software Solutions
Seabed offers custom-made services and solutions for monitoring and reporting machine control and dredging activities. Using software systems, clients can get in-depth information on numerical displays and generate real-time 3D visuals to literally see the offshore process evolving. These products can be applied to dredging vessels, hydraulic cranes and cable cranes, and they can be used as a tug management system. They are created in close co-operation with the end-users to allow fast and easy processing of the large amounts of data collected. Seabed offers the services to modify these products in order to suit the specific needs of its clients.

Positioning Solutions
Seabed is specialised in a large variety of positioning solutions. It offers a wide range of GPS equipment, sensors and underwater positioning systems, and provides suitable training for end-users.

Underwater Sensors
Underwater sensors are often used to gain accurate and usable information that contributes to underwater measurements.
A number of different underwater sensors are used for different purposes, such as measuring temperature, depth, conductivity, salinity, speed of sound, turbidity, water current, wave height, etc. Most of these parameters can be measured simultaneously using combined sensor acquisition systems.

Bathymetric Solutions
As a supplier for the hydrographic and geophysical survey industry and as a system integrator, Seabed supplies turnkey solutions that often involve bathymetric systems. Seabed represents several manufacturers of the following applications: interferometric sonar, single-or dual-beam echosounders, multi-beam echosounders, sub-bottom profiling sonar and side-scan sonar.

Telemetric and Data Transfer Solutions
Over the years, Seabed has gained experience in a large variety of wireless communication systems. The telemetry fields that Seabed is specialised in are UHF, Wi-Fi, GSM/GPRS/UMTS and Bluetooth.

Bottom-sampling Solutions
Seabed has gained experience in developing highly accurate bottom-sampling equipment, which is used to determine bottom composition. The successful bottom-sampling equipment that Seabed offers are vibrocorers, Van Veen grabs, box corers, piston corers and gravity corers.

Underwater Cables, Connectors and Housings
When using cables and connectors in subsea environments, the connections between cables and the electric or electronic instrumentation require custom-made cable assemblies. High-quality cables, connectors and housings are a necessity when it comes to underwater connections.
Seabed provides suitable waterproof solutions for underwater cabling, connections and terminals.

Market View
Seabed has noticed that questions from clients and potential clients are increasingly specific when it comes to offshore instruments. Efficiency is important, for example, in the dredging industry. Dredging companies want to know precisely where they are, where they have been, what the bottom consists of, what the composition of the seabed is before and after dredging, etc. Standard solutions do not always suit the clients’ needs. Custom-made solutions are therefore required. Seabed is more then a distributor; the company provides custom-made, turnkey solutions.
Seabed is a manufacturer and has about 20 dealerships, which offer a variety of instruments and solutions. With its unique combination of technical expertise and high-quality products, Seabed offers sales support and engineering to customers all over the world.

Looking to the Future
Seabed increasingly expands its product range and intends to continue doing so in the future. The company also aims to further extend its European sales network with sales representatives. Seabed already has a second office in Belgium. At the end of 2008, Seabed will move to a brand new, especially designed DeepSea office building in Amsterdam-North together with its sister company Deep.