[PSUBS-MAILIST] Commercial

[Jon Wallace]

Scott,

Real commercial work is going to cost you certification so be prepared 
to really beef up your fabrication budget.  ROV's are the primary work 
tool these days so you'll be competing primarily against them.  For 
non-ROV work you'll be competing against Nuytco and others of that 
caliber.  The amount of work you get will be determined by the value 
your submarine offers for a particular job and the price point to 
perform the work.  You'll need to honestly assess the capabilities of 
your submarine against the competition to determine if you can compete 
against them.

For an odd job, local, not-really-serious but would like to make a buck, 
commercial work; just negotiate the best rate you can get when someone 
needs your services.  Forget about certification and avoid work that 
requires such rating.  You can follow the lead of work boats and barges 
for pricing your services.  You likely want to charge a couple hundred 
bucks just to hitch up and move the sub out of the driveway, some fee 
for fuel and travel expenses, and some per hour fee for vessel and pilot 
with something like a 3-4 hour minimum.

It's a great dream, I'd love to live it, but I think you're looking at 
hundreds of thousands to get to the point where you have a steady 
revenue stream that makes it financially feasible. Not impossible, but 
difficult without lots of capital.

Jon


On 4/13/2014 6:51 PM, swaters wrote:
> I know we have some retired commercial divers in psubs. What kind of 
> work is out there for subs like ours realistically. I know in order to 
> be effective we need tooling and manipulators. What are the benifits 
> from the employer to use a sub rather that divers?
> Thanks,
> Scott Waters
>
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