Oriane Huguenin
Interview
1 / Could you tell us more about your career path and your current position?
After geography studies focusing on maritime geography, I joined the hydrography department of ENSTA Bretagne, in partnership with the Naval Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOM). I was able to get in the same year a master’s degree in hydrography and master’s degree in integrated coastal zone management, delivered by the University of Nantes.
I had always been passionate about the sea and ships, but it was only after my studies that I decided I wanted to sail. I sent an application to Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, where I found a position that allowed me to combine my skills, values and career aspirations.
I am now the Hydrography Manager for Louis Dreyfus Armateurs’ cable ships. I am in charge of preparation and follow-up for cable installation, as well as writing up documentation for clients. My teams include two to four people and we work in 12-hour shifts to ensure permanent monitoring of installation. The service interacts with all the other ship services, both operational and traditional sailing services.
My position therefore leads me to work with all the personnel on board, but also to be attentive to our customers, and of course to work in close cooperation with the Captain who is also the operation manager.
I have been appointed to ASN’s department in charge of marine tenders. This allows me to discover another part of projects process and to offer my operational expertise to this department.
2 / What has your career path been like at Louis Dreyfus Armateurs?
I joined LDA in 2008 as a surveyor (hydrographer(. I have sailed on all cable ships of the fleet, and with different team leaders who have each passed on their experience during many different operations.
These years have allowed me to acquire the skills and necessary knowledge for my job and its different aspects: mastering the installation of submarine cables and regulating the cable laying in real time; anticipation and calculations relating to future operations; data processing to establish the reports and the mapping that we provide to the client. Also, the maintenance of small equipment dedicate to the operations. I then became a team leader in 2016. And at the same time, I have also been a seafarers’ representative within the company since 2014. This commitment is yet another way of expressing my commitment to the Group.
3 / What do you like most about your job?
First of all, there are human relationships: as explained before, the diversity of individual profiles I work with is very enriching. We are together for weeks, we have all our backgrounds, our experiences, our own motivations, and the exchanges linked to this mixing are often fascinating. Also, whatever the preparation before a mission is, there will always be unforeseen events or setbacks, whether technical, environmental or human. These unforeseen events make it always necessary to adapt and get us to ban from our vocabulary “we always did like that”: the important thing is to do your best with the present conditions. And even if it is sometimes destabilizing, it is always an additional experience that systematically make us grow up. I truly enjoy uncommon missions!
The rigor that I apply to my work and my teams allows us to participate at our level in the Company’s reputation.
Passing on my experience is also a key point. There is no school to learn how to lay cables, and everything I have learned I try to pass it on as much as possible to others in order to provide them with the means to progress and also to work on their own. Once again, through this transmission, both the technical and human sides are interesting. It is necessary to adapt to each one to explain and help to clearly conceive the concepts of the submarine cable laying and to master the calculation tools allowing us to properly prepare the operations.
Lastly, it would be a lie to forget to mention the landscapes, the skies, the lights, the countries and their cultures, the marine fauna and all these things that we are lucky to see during our missions.
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Thank you Oriane!
