Talk to me about commercial diving.
Discussion
I've really fancied commercial diving as a career for a while now and have lately started to look into it a bit more. I currently work in transport (directing shunters and arrivals/departures) earn £33k for 32hours a week give or take, it's not particularly challenging but I go home early every day and it pays too much to leave for any equivelent job. The main thing that attracts me to diving is the fact that many offshore workers seem to get their hours in in big chunks and take long periods of downtime inbetween, infact I was first put onto the idea of it when reading on this forum about someone who works 3 months a year or something similar although not as a diver. I've done quite a bit of reading up on it and am left with a few questions that I can't seem to find the answers to can anybody help me out?
- Are the rates of pay I've come across realistic? I've seen figures quoted from £100 a day upto £1400+ a day for saturation diving on 28day stints the former would be a paycut but I'd happily take it for an interesting job with prospects of it increasing with experience, the latter sounds too good to be true I'd only work a month a year if that were the case.
- Possibly the most important question due to the cost of training how easy is it to find work as a diver? I have seen a few courses for around the £12k mark which claim to offer you all of the qualifications required to work as a commercial diver but is employment easy to find straight out of dive school? Are there agencies for these sort of things?
- Is it as flexible as you like can you just work a month on several off or would it be more a case of having to take permanent employment and follow a strict rota?
Also I'd love to hear from anyone who has worked similar shift paterns on how it has effected their personal lifes, I have a girlfriend and 2 young kids 6 & 3 having briefly mentioned it to my partner I think she has passed it off as one of my fads but they are a big part of the reason for wanting months off at a time.
- Are the rates of pay I've come across realistic? I've seen figures quoted from £100 a day upto £1400+ a day for saturation diving on 28day stints the former would be a paycut but I'd happily take it for an interesting job with prospects of it increasing with experience, the latter sounds too good to be true I'd only work a month a year if that were the case.
- Possibly the most important question due to the cost of training how easy is it to find work as a diver? I have seen a few courses for around the £12k mark which claim to offer you all of the qualifications required to work as a commercial diver but is employment easy to find straight out of dive school? Are there agencies for these sort of things?
- Is it as flexible as you like can you just work a month on several off or would it be more a case of having to take permanent employment and follow a strict rota?
Also I'd love to hear from anyone who has worked similar shift paterns on how it has effected their personal lifes, I have a girlfriend and 2 young kids 6 & 3 having briefly mentioned it to my partner I think she has passed it off as one of my fads but they are a big part of the reason for wanting months off at a time.
sorry guys I thought I'd responded to this thanks for all the replies, it sounds like it's not quite the untapped gold mine the schools would have you believe but if I didn't mind taking a punt and did the welding bit I might one day get a job. Sounds like it wouldn't be enough for me to gamble £13k+ on and leave my current job especially if like you say it's likely when you do reach the big money you become to much of an asset to just work when you feel like it which was my main aim from the whole thing. Do the rov's do the welding too or do divers still do that?
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