Unique System & HYPACK's Hydrographic Course in UAE

A division of the Unique Maritime Group (UMG) which is one of the world’s leading integrated turnkey subsea and offshore solution providers, Unique System FZE in conjunction with HYPACK Inc. has successfully conducted HYPACK’s hydrographic & offshore survey training course at its training centre in Hamriyah Free Zone, Sharjah, UAE. As a precursor to this hugely popular course, a string of training topics, both technical and operational remarkably influencing the current market trends in the survey industry were also discussed as a part of the training schedule. The training courses were held from the 16th to the 27th of November 2014.

HYPACK is one of the most widely used hydrographic surveying packages in the world, with more than 4,000 users. It provides the Surveyor with all the tools needed to design their survey, collect data, process it, reduce it, and generate final products.

The first week of the survey training was kick started with an introduction to the hydrographic, geophysical and oceanographic survey industry by our highly competent engineering team. A wide range of geophysical, environmental and oceanographic survey systems were discussed along with some hands-on workshop sessions. Some of the significant topics and systems covered during the week included single beam and multibeam survey planning & designing, Single Beam Echo Sounder (SBES) & Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES) Interfacing, RTK & DGPS positioning systems, surface positioning & navigation, calibration, underwater positioning and seismic data acquisition & post processing. Workshop sessions were also included to better understand some of the widely used survey equipments such as underwater gyros, magnetometers & gradiometers, side scan sonars & sub bottom profilers, tide gauges, wave sensors and meteorological & water quality sensors.

The second week of the training focused on HYPACK and its software solutions. The week-long course was jointly conducted by Unique System’s engineering team along with Pat Sanders, the President of HYPACK. The course aided the attendees to maximize their productivity using the hydrographic equipment, which could enable them to obtain efficient, high quality and accurate data and long operational hours of equipment without any maintenance damage, thus enhancing the hydrographic capabilities of offshore survey operations for effective seabed mapping.

On successful completion of the survey programs, Ian Huggins, General Manager @ Unique System FZE commented, “It has always been a pleasure to conduct HYPACK’s survey training programs at our training centre in the UAE. These programs are aimed at providing an opportunity for hydrographic survey professionals within the region to upgrade their skills with newer versions of survey software packages and systems available in the market. We look forward to conducting such training programs in the Middle East in the near future as well. ”

Pat Sanders, President @ HYPACK, Inc. further added, “I am delighted to have conducted our training program at Unique’s training centre once again this year. Unique System FZE is favorably recognized by its clients for the top-class survey products it offers along with a highly proficient engineering team that is capable of providing real-time support to some of the most complex survey projects in the region. This year’s training schedule did cover a wide range of topics including the HYPACK SHELL, Volumes computation and HYSWEEP along with some hands-on field training. We look forward to a fruitful association with Unique in the years to come.”