Background
Our Client – DeepTek – A small subsea salvage company had purchased a number of composite umbilical cables for operating their specialist salvage equipment to recover valuable cargo from ship wrecks in deep water. Each of these cables were engineered specially for the application by the cable manufacturer, for our clients latest innovative subsea equipment package. Each new system required more power, and more sophisticated controls at greater depth than the previous generation of equipment.

The Problem
The Last of these cables purchased did not work, with control and CCTV signals suffering interference and loss of signal whenever the equipment was using power. This led to a protracted legal battle with supplier suing our client for non-payment. 

Finesse Investigation
Finesse was appointed as a small specialist company whom the family business felt they could work with. Though we had extensive marine experience we had no track record in design of umbilical cables. However, once the design was analysed and compared to that of the previous cables, there were clearly fundamental engineering principals which had apparently not been considered and general good practice for managing EMC (Electro Magnetic Compatibility) issues had been contradicted in the design. As the supplier was unable to provide design calculations to justify their design decisions, our report demonstrated that the lack of consideration of well-established design principals could reasonably have been predicted to result in the design not being fit for purpose.

Result
The umbilical supplier dropped their case and settled our client’s costs with an out of court settlement.