Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

THE ADCI RESHAPES ITSELF
When I first became aware of the positive effects of the Association of Diving Contractors (ADC) I was a diving supervisor/diver with a
few years experience in deep bounce and saturation diving, mostly working overseas.
The first underwater convention I attended was in the late 1970s. I was working for Ocean Systems and had just completed a sixweek
rotation on a exploration drill ship in Venezuela. My flight landed in New Orleans just as the underwater event was getting
underway. What an eye opener the event was—all the latest equipment, all the latest research, and the people who were behind all the
new technology, plus every bar in the French Quarter was full of divers. They were easy to spot since most were physically fit and wearing
a waterproof watch.
The equipment on display and technical papers were eye and brain candy to me. I just couldn’t get enough. This was where the shakers
and movers of our industry gathered to talk about new procedures, equipment, research, and, of course, the camaraderie.
I still have my copy of Decompression Sickness and its Therapy, organized by the Association of Diving Contractors and the Institute for
Environmental Medicine. (University of Pennsylvania, April 1978, C. J. Lambertsen, editor.)
I attended quite a few of these annual shows through the years but it wasn’t until a few years later that I was introduced to the inner
workings of the ADCI while I was working for Andre Galerne (IUC). He had just been elected president of the ADCI and was fully engaged
in the process of resetting and the association to include the inland divers, international members and the creation of Underwater Magazine.
We had quite a few conversations about its purpose and direction of the ADC. He had a vision for the association.
More years pass and I am appointed to the ADCI board of directors representing two major diving companies—Stolt and then Cal Dive
International. Here is where the reality hit me (remember I am a card-carrying member) that every member of the board is sitting at the
meetings with one goal—to ensure the standards and level of safety meet or exceed best industry standards, as well as regulatory standards.
The meetings are interesting. After all, this is the heartbeat of commercial diving operational sanity. Some members have different views
but, at the end of the day, the voting on each issue was completed via a majority consensus. A couple of years later I was honored to be
elected to be chairman of the board and president of ADCI. This job lasted for six one-year terms.
As one can imagine, this was not an easy job; you learn as each moment passes. During the first meeting I perspired like I was in a
sauna. I learned to keep my mouth closed until others had spoken; I tried to keep my opinion till last. I studied and implemented “Robert’s
Rules of Order” in a relaxed manner to allow a free exchange of ideas and opinions as everyone was entitled to express his opinion. I found
myself at times acting as a referee rather than chairman. Fifteen-minute breaks helped to re-focus the agenda.
We created an aggressive agenda to re-write the consensus standards for the twenty-first century, and a new evergreen standard now
called the International Consensus Standards for Commercial Diving and Underwater Operations, 6.0 Edition. This was a major task
because we started from scratch to completely review every issue and wrote the standards to meet and exceed best industry practices. This
realized the new Occupational Safety and
Health Administration (OSHA was created in
December 1970) likely would try to come up
with safety rules that would be federally
imposed. Industry leaders wanted to develop
their own standard operating procedures and
then if necessary, spar with OSHA over their
adequacy and acceptability.
“The OSHA threat did not go away just
because we formed ADC and continued to
work on the MTS safety standards,” Hughes
said. “The day came when we were notified
that...formal open hearings on diving
safety standards would be held in
Washington. I was elected to go to
Washington and speak. I worked hard at
putting together a passionate argument that
ADC knew more about commercial diving
than the government bureaucrats ever would.
We wanted to convince OSHA to let us finish
our standards and then have them accepted.”
Hughes flew to Washington and went to
the building where the hearings were
underway. There was a large auditorium with
a podium on the main floor between the front
seats and a raised stage.
“I took a seat in the back of the auditorium
and looked the situation over,” he said. “The government
officials who were there to hear testimony
were seated up on the stage behind a long
table which stretched across the stage. There
were at least fifteen of them, but they all seemed
to be coming and going, talking to each other, or
even sleeping. What they were not doing was listening
to the people who were testifying.”
Even worse, the podium was turned so it
faced the audience in the auditorium, not the
OSHA officials on the stage.
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