Apex Heavy Lifting unites a team of seasoned industry professionals with decades of combined experience in the offshore wind sector. By leveraging this extensive expertise, Apex delivers a next-generation heavy lifting solution designed to meet the unique challenges of offshore construction and installation.
An unrivalled 100+ years of combined Offshore Wind experience across the AHL team
Team
Expert Team
Alan West - Chief Executive Officer
Senior Executive with a significant worldwide Management record of over 40 years in the offshore Subsea Contracting industry, working on multiple projects, asset and offshore personnel management and asset development.
Strategic knowledge of the business drivers in the Offshore Construction Contracting Business.
Alan is a Chartered Engineer with additional qualifications of MSc and MBA.
John Giles - Chief Technical Officer
Design and development engineer with over 35 years of experience in the Offshore Oil and Gas Sector. Roles ranging from Project Engineer to Senior Design and Development Engineer working on projects as diverse as recovering the oil from a sunken upturned tanker in the Bay of Biscay.
Designing the remote tooling to align, mate and assemble pipeline flanges, in 3000m of seawater.
John holds a BSc (Hons) and is a Chartered Engineer.
Charlie Whyte - Chief Financial Officer
Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of diverse experience. Deep understanding of operations, business processes and drivers. Led outsourced finance teams of over 60 FTE’s based between the UK and India. Responsible for financial management and control of a fleet of life extension and newbuild complex construction vessels, saturation dive ships and pipelay vessels.
Alan Duncan - Chief Commercial Officer
A supply chain executive, with significant senior multinational global experience across the Defence, Semiconductor, Optoelectronic and Oil & Gas sectors spanning 30 years. Alan is an expert in Offshore Wind supply chain strategy mapping and delivery, from a developer, T1 contractor, SME and Government perspective. Alan delivers supply chain strategy solutions and provides commercial consultancy in UK, USA, Japan, Brazil, Norway and Ireland via his company (Scotia Supply Chain Ltd), Alan has been working in the Offshore Wind sector for 15 years and holds an honours degree in Business Studies.
Gavin McBride - Chief Operations Officer
Gavin McBride is a highly experienced heavy lift engineer with 24 years of global project experience in both the onshore and offshore wind sector. An expert in construction, O&M, and decommissioning, he delivers specialised CapEx/OpEx-based insights to DevEx-based developments via his consultancy Enerview Solutions. His work spans the UK, USA, Taiwan, Brazil, Ireland, and Portugal. Gavin, who holds a BBS in Business and Languages, is also a Co-Founder of the ECO Wind Cluster, a +50-strong OSW group sharing supply chain knowledge.
Zoë Barnes - Strategic Advisor
Zoë has over 20 years of experience in the renewables industry, initially in wind R&D and latterly in strategic consultancy and offshore wind development. She has led a wide range of strategic engagements for industry participants, drawing, on her deep knowledge of technology commercialisation, and economic development in the offshore wind industry. Zoë is currently the chair of the UK Floating Wind Taskforce and a non-executive director of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership. She is one of the leading advisors on UK offshore wind economic development.
Denise O'Connor - Head of Marketing & Communications
Denise O'Connor is a dynamic, results-driven Senior Marketing Executive with over two decades of invaluable experience specialising in launching and scaling new businesses within the service sector. Denise successfully built and scaled a thriving service business from the ground up and gained a 360-degree view of growth, strategy, and operational excellence . Equipped with an honours degree in Business Studies and Marketing, and years of experience in sales and marketing roles, she brings a robust, growth-focused perspective to every commercial challenge.
Catrin Fowden - QHSE Director
Over 30 years experience in the oil and gas industry ranging from hands-on operational support to developing and implementing Corporate HSE strategy for multinational energy and services companies.
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