Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the United States, has been selected as the main location for DNV’s Division Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa. Elisabeth Tørstad is moving from Norway to Houston to be the COO and to head this new division.
“The re-organisation of our services in both the Americas and the southern part of Africa will bring us closer to these important markets. Coming from a strong market position, I am personally very much looking forward to capturing a larger share of these markets. This will be achieved through the team efforts and customer focus of a responsive and competent organisation,” says an enthusiastic Tørstad.
Elisabeth Tørstad has been with DNV for 15 years, the last nine of which have been spent in management jobs. Her position before becoming head of this division was as director of operations for DNV’s global operation in Cleaner Energy and Utilities. Her previous management positions include head of the Pipelines and Materials Technology Department, head of the Deepwater Technology and Technology Qualification Department, head of the Structural Integrity Section and group leader for Materials Technology. A most appropriate background for the Houston location, where the DNV management team will also consist of Peter Bjerager as Director of Operation for the oil and gas market, Kenneth Vareide as Director of Operation for the maritime market and Kim Mørk as Director of Operation for cleaner and renewable energy. Ray Fales, the Director of business development, is back with DNV after spending some years outside of the company.
“We are in Houston not only to put our stamp of approval on documents and systems but also to provide our competence, services and expertise for the benefit of our customers. Our services will be competence-based and Houston is an excellent hub for this. The geographical location is also favourable, with good connections to both North and South America. Our location in the Houston “Energy Corridor” is also very positive - close to our customers and with an excellent competence and recruitment base for us. DNV’s role as an independent third party is essential to our business. From this standpoint, we will expand our cooperation with both the authorities and educational institutions, such as our Top Tech programme at the University of California, Berkeley which is a dedicated training program for our top technical experts. The post-recession investments in the US economy within the areas of deepwater oil and gas developments, carbon capture and storage and renewable energy will provide excellent business opportunities for us, based on our strong position in these market segments,” says Tørstad.
Customer focus
“Relations and more relations – these will be the key focus for our customer service managers and managers throughout the organisation. As we are a service provider, we must ensure that we build relations and are there when business opportunities arise in our traditional and new markets. Building relations will take time and must be done close to changing markets and customer needs. We are also in close proximity to our biggest US-based competitor (ABS), which I view as both an opportunity and a challenge,” says Tørstad. “We are developing our resources with a strong local and international management, and we look forward to capturing larger parts of the market and building success for our customers and ourselves.”
Latin America and Africa
“The expansion in Latin America is another opportunity for us, and we are doing very well - especially in Brazil with the new offshore activities there following the huge offshore oil and gas finds. The Rio office will be expanding to serve the markets over the next few years and DNV’s complete competence base will be needed to serve our important customer base here. We must adjust to local demands and can do so by linking our customer service operations to DNV’s complete competence base.
“Finally,” says Tørstad, “we will continue to grow in Sub-Saharan Africa from our hub in Durban, South Africa and our strong presence in Angola. The offshore activities here are constantly increasing and we are growing with the market. The relations with the offshore business here are strongly related to the Houston- and Rio-based oil and gas activities as well as to strong relations with the Chinese investments in Africa, so working on this in cooperation with DNV in Shanghai will also be important. In this truly global setting, where African countries work closely with the US, Brazil and China, we must strengthen our focus and make use of our advantage in being a global company.”