Misc. Notes
Misc. Notes
Professional Career
Immediately after graduating from Mississippi State University in May of 1978 with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, Richard Summers began his forty year career with
Fugro.
In 1979 Richard was promoted to Party Chief and in the following years managed numerous rig moves, pipelays, derrick barge installations, and hazard surveys.
Through the next ten years Richard continued to build his expertise in the field and in 1990 began working with an in-house Unix based 3D navigation package. Because of this project, the company moved from a “Top Down” array calibration to a “Box In” method and procedure, laid the groundwork for all future construction projects in the 90’s.
In 1992 Richard participated in the installation of the
Santa Ynez pipelines in the Santa Barbara Channel. Previous to this project, Fugro Lafayette’s LBL experience was mostly for towfish navigation and this project proved the company with the opportunity to learn
LBL construction methods.
Then in 1993 Rick was Survey Lead on the ROV vessel during the Augur P/L installation. During this period Richard developed the company procedure for
USBL calibration. The basics of this procedure are still in use today.
In the following years Rich was Acoustic Survey Lead on many GOM world record setting projects. In 1998 Richard worked with Survey Lead Jim Waters on a
Subsea 7 project project in the
Cayman Trench. During the project Richard and Jim provided USBL positioning on a record 5,022 meter (16, 465 feet) dive. At that time it was the deepest dive recorded for a working class ROV. After the project, the Lead Engineer exclaimed to the pair “I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to be able to look at the survey screen and know that it is exactly where the ROV is. Before Fugro joined this project, we could not tell which side of the boat the ROV was on, much less if it was even in the water.”
In the early 2000’s Richard added ROV mounted SSS data acquisition and processing to his skill set, along with vessel mounted
MBES for ultra-deep water. Recently he added
AUV data acquisition and processing.
Throughout his forty years career, Richard’s innovations and contributions have had a lasting effect and continue to be in use today.