About

Ash Skett, Director

I have spent over a decade in the maritime sector, most of it around uncrewed and remotely operated vessels: 12 m and 18 m uncrewed surface vessels, offshore and close inshore, operated from remote operations centres rather than from a bridge. Underneath all of it is a professional sailing career on crewed vessels, which is where the instinct for what the sea does to a plan comes from.

Between 2018 and 2025 I was at SEA-KIT International, first as part of the founding team and later as its USV commissioning and operations lead. That covered the whole operating side rather than one slice of it. Writing and revising the procedures. Standing up and running control centres, with the watch routines, role structure and continuity plans that go with them. Leading FMEA workshops on multiple platforms, including two first-in-class designs. Planning and running trials and commissioning campaigns, from factory testing through harbour and site acceptance. Designing and delivering operator training and competency programmes. Mobilising shore bases and getting vessels safely in and out of the water. And preparing the case that puts an uncrewed vessel in front of a flag administration, a class surveyor, a harbour authority or a client, then sitting in the room while it is questioned.

I have also worked with the MCA during the development of regulatory material for uncrewed vessels and operator competency, which is a useful thing to have done when you are on the other side of the table trying to get a vessel approved.

I started UMC because the same gap keeps appearing. Teams build a capable vessel and then discover that operating it for real is a different discipline, with its own paperwork, its own failure modes and its own approvers. I am not an autonomy researcher and I do not sell software. I am the person who has stood in the control centre at three in the morning deciding whether to continue, hold or recover, and written down how that decision gets made.

SEA-KIT International, 2018 to 2025

Founding years, 2018 to 2020

I joined as part of the founding team and helped shape the business itself: the original operational frameworks, the way the vessels were actually going to be run, and the early customer conversations. I gave strategic and operational input through the development of the first-generation USV platforms, supporting engineering integration, trials, and early customer engagement.

I was operational lead on the missions that built the company's reputation, including long-range transoceanic operations, the volcano survey in Tonga, and the X-Prize uncrewed USV and AUV hydrographic survey for the Nippon Foundation and GEBCO Seabed 2030 project.

USV commissioning and operations lead, 2020 to 2025

Site-level leadership of a commissioning operation running several concurrent uncrewed vessel builds, with multi-disciplinary teams and high-value assets. Responsible for daily operations, HSE, trials planning, team coordination, and technical and regulatory compliance across the site.

I carried the permanent operational leadership through that period: writing the company's operational procedures and risk mitigation strategies, delivering operator training and competency development across internal teams and clients, and running the early-stage mobilisation and commissioning that put vessels into service.

What that leaves me able to do

• Operational readiness assessed against what actually happens at sea, not against a document template.
• Remote operations centres designed as an operating model, from capability tier through watchkeeping to continuity.
• Regulatory and certification work with flag administrations and classification societies, including trial exemptions and operational limitations.
• Trials and commissioning campaigns planned as evidence gathering, and defensible acceptance positions at the end of them.
• Competence frameworks and training that stand up when a client or an insurer asks how you know.
• The operational answers in a room full of investors, primes or customers, which is often what decides whether they believe the rest of it.

The material this work is framed against

Publicly available frameworks used routinely in this work include the MCA Workboat Code, the MUKRWG Code of Practice for uncrewed vessels, IMO MSC.1/Circ.1604 on MASS trials, and IMCA guidance. Where a programme sits outside UK waters, the equivalent national route is mapped as part of the job.

How I work

Directly, and in writing. Scope and price agreed before work starts. Findings given straight, including the ones you would rather not hear, because a review that tells you everything is fine is worth nothing.

Current client names are kept private unless a client asks otherwise, so you will not find logos on this site.