The Diving Contractor: From Commercial Diver to Diving Company Owner: 1 - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

Most divers never see the invoice.
They see the water, the hours and the pay slip. Somewhere ashore, a number was agreed for the spread they are standing on. Every good diver has done that arithmetic on the back deck and thought: I could do this myself.

Alaattin Tuncer did. He could not swim when he applied to study underwater technology in Istanbul. He began again in America as a tender in the Gulf of Mexico, moved into air, bell and saturation diving, and became a supervisor in Long Beach. Then he built his own diving company in Florida around one used helmet and equipment he made by hand, and waited for somebody to call. Later he learned the expensive way that a diving company can lose more on paper than under water.

He knew how to do the job. He did not know how to own the job. THE DIVING CONTRACTOR is the book he wishes someone had handed him on his first day.
Part One: the career

• What a commercial diver really does, and the markets that share one helmet
• A day on the dive station, and who stands where
• Is this life for you: the body, the hours, the pay, the people who last
• Getting in: the medical, the school, the first job, the tender years
• Staying alive: the rules divers learn the hard way, and the hazards that kill experienced men in shallow water
• Climbing from tender to supervisor, and the skills that pay
• Where the work is: ships, class surveys, inland and offshore. Who buys, and how fast each one pays

Parts Two and Three: the company

• What a diving company actually sells, and the four business models
• Setting up: structure, registrations, the gate pass, the capability statement
• Insurance and contracts in plain language: the cover that matters, the clauses that bite, pay-when-paid, retainage and liens
• The safety system that protects the company, and why the "no" comes from the office
• The starter spread: what to buy, what to rent, and what must never be reduced
• The plan a banker will read, built on a model company costed line by line
• Pricing: how an hourly wage becomes a day rate, and why a busy year can still lose money
• Scopes, bids and change orders. Finding work. Hiring and leading a crew
• Cash, credit and control: the gap between finishing a job and being paid
• One ordinary job, from the telephone call to the paid invoice
• When things go wrong, and the mistakes that close diving companies

It ends with a first-year action plan, a day-rate calculator and a business-plan template you can fill in.
Who it is for
The curious. You saw a documentary, or a headline about underwater welders. Part One is an honest answer.
Anyone thinking of the trade, or whose son, daughter or partner is: what it takes, what it costs, and how you get in.
Divers who want their own company. Parts Two and Three are the business school the author never had.
Supervisors. Knowing how the office prices a job makes you a better supervisor and a harder man to cheat.
What it is not
It will not teach you to dive, to supervise a dive, to weld under water or to treat a casualty. It is not a diving manual and not a safety standard, and not legal, insurance or medical advice. Those belong to accredited schools, qualified supervisors and the governing standards. Every price and wage in the book carries its year and a note naming its public source, so you can check it and bring it up to date. Where the author got it wrong, he says so.

Coming next: Book Two, THE DIVING CONTRACTOR FIELD MANUAL, the bench book that sits beside it, with equipment, job cards, scopes of work and forms.

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