Beth is a Co-Founder and Director of Quoceant, an innovative engineering consultancy dedicated to the development of the offshore renewables industry. She is also an industry supervisor for IDCORE and a member of IDCORE’s Independent Advisory Board, as well as being a Citing Commissioner for World Rugby and the Scottish Rugby Union as a former Scotland Women’s Rugby Player.
Prior to setting up Quoceant, Beth was the Operations Development Manager at Pelamis Wave Power, where she managed the delivery of the full-scale Pelamis operations programme.
Her career in the offshore renewables sector has centred around mechanical system design work, developing more efficient and safer systems for offshore operations, planning their maintenance and execution, simulating the effects of different operational strategies, analysing system reliability, creating test methodologies, fault finding and running rectification programmes.
She is currently leading the development of Q-Connect, a modular and adaptable electro-mechanical system for connecting marine renewable devices to moorings and electrical cables, born out of the team’s experience in Pelamis. Supported by Wave Energy Scotland, Q-Connect was originally designed to provide rapid and safe connection and disconnection of wave and tidal devices, but is now also being developed for use with floating offshore wind.
IDCORE Involvement
Beth first became involved with IDCORE as the industry supervisor for a researcher who joined Pelamis in 2012 from the Centre’s first cohort. She was so impressed by this experience that she was keen to find opportunities to bring other IDCORE researchers onboard when Quoceant was set up. She is now the industry supervisor for Leigh Baxter, one of the researchers from IDCORE’s tenth cohort, recruited in 2022. Leigh is supporting the development of Q-Connect, in particular exploring the benefits the system can provide by reducing installation time and extending weather windows for such work.
From Beth:
‘Physical design work involves a lot of subtle detail. Engaging with IDCORE allows us to extend the range of simulations and analysis we can undertake as part of this design work. Wrapping this up with detailed case studies as we move into the more practical design phase of a project helps us to maximise the benefit for the industry, which compliments everything else we do in Quoceant.
We want to recruit engineers who have practical experience, and we are willing to invest in making this happen. The academic training that IDCORE researchers receive is really valuable, as are the links the projects provide to the academic institutions involved. IDCORE does all this in the context of seeking direct application of their research to industry, and the agility they have developed is important in an industry that's moving so fast.
Perhaps most importantly, I personally enjoy it – it’s exciting to engage with IDCORE researchers!’
The Future
The offshore renewables industry is still rapidly evolving, requiring new insights and capable people working on the challenges. In this context, Beth is a keen supporter of everything that IDCORE does, not least because the process produces very employable engineers who can ‘hit the ground running’ - a resource that’s desperately needed to sustain the on-going development of this nascent industry.
