Mentoring Junior ROV Pilots: A Senior Pilot's Guide to Training the Next Generation

The offshore ROV industry has a mentoring problem. Senior pilots are rarely given any formal guidance on how to train juniors, yet they are expected to produce competent, confident pilots from raw trainees in the space of a few campaigns. Most mentoring in the industry is informal, inconsistent, and personality-dependent — some juniors get excellent development; others spend years in the seat without anyone systematically building their skills. If you are a senior pilot or supervisor with juniors in your team, this is your opportunity to do better than you were probably done by.

Structuring the Mentoring Relationship from Day One

The first conversation with a junior pilot sets the tone for the entire working relationship. Be direct about what you expect, what you will provide, and what you will not tolerate. Specifically: you expect them to attempt tasks before asking for help, to ask questions rather than guess when genuinely uncertain, and to be honest about their limitations. You will provide task briefings before each new or complex operation, feedback after significant dives, and a safe environment to admit mistakes. You will not accept dishonesty about errors, unwillingness to learn from mistakes, or passive acceptance of every handhold rather than developing independent judgment.

Common Mistakes Junior Pilots Make

• Rushing the pre-dive checklist to appear efficient — this is the most dangerous habit to form early
• Flying at full speed in reduced visibility or complex structure proximity — learned in pool training, inappropriate offshore
• Failing to communicate tether position to the supervisor — tether management is not just the senior pilot's responsibility
• Over-relying on auto-functions (auto-depth, auto-heading) in conditions where manual control is safer and more precise
• Not logging anomalies during the dive because they seem minor — these observations have value even if no immediate action is needed
• Accepting verbal task instructions without confirming they understand the objective — nodding is not understanding
• Freezing when unexpected equipment behavior occurs instead of backing off and communicating to the supervisor
• Treating handover briefings as a formality rather than a genuine transfer of situational awareness

Building Confidence Without Creating Dependency

The goal of mentoring is to develop a pilot who can operate independently and make sound judgments without you in the room. Dependency — where the junior pilot constantly defers to you rather than developing their own decision-making — is a failure of mentoring, not a success. The practical distinction: when a junior asks 'what should I do here?', the answer should rarely be a direct instruction. Instead, respond with 'what are your options?' or 'what's your concern about this approach?' You are building a decision-making framework, not a set of memorized procedures. Memorized procedures fail when the situation doesn't match the script; a strong decision-making framework handles novel situations.

Knowing When to Let Them Struggle

This is the hardest judgment call in mentoring. A junior pilot battling a difficult approach in moderate current, taking twice as long as you would, is learning more in those twenty minutes than in a week of straightforward dives. Intervening too early — even with good intentions — robs them of that learning. The threshold for intervention should be: is there a genuine safety or operational risk, or am I just impatient? If it's the latter, hold back. If there is a real risk, step in — clearly, without embarrassing the pilot in front of the team — and explain your reasoning afterward. The debrief after a difficult dive where the junior pilot struggled and came through is enormously valuable. Don't skip it.

IMCA Competence Assessment: Your Role

Under the IMCA C 002 framework, competence assessment of ROV personnel is the responsibility of qualified assessors — typically senior pilots and supervisors who have been designated as competent to assess within their organization. If you are performing this role formally, you need to understand the distinction between teaching and assessing. During an assessment, you are observing and recording, not coaching. The assessment environment must give the candidate a genuine opportunity to demonstrate competence without prompting. Document your assessments contemporaneously — notes made during or immediately after the dive are far more reliable than memory reconstructed at the end of the campaign.

Documenting Junior Pilot Progress

• Maintain a simple campaign log for each junior pilot — dates, tasks supervised, specific observations
• Note both positive competence demonstrations and areas for development — one-sided records are not credible
• Record instances where the junior pilot showed good independent judgment — these are as important as skill demonstrations
• Document any formal competence assessments conducted, including task, outcome, and evidence observed
• Note equipment incidents involving the junior pilot with factual description — avoid evaluative language in incident records
• At campaign end, provide a written or verbal summary to the junior pilot of their development during the campaign
• If the junior pilot is approaching grade progression, ensure your campaign documentation supports their competence portfolio

The Culture You Create

Senior pilots who mentor well create a ripple effect that extends well beyond the pilots they directly train. Juniors who develop under a strong mentor tend to mentor their own juniors the same way — the habits and standards propagate through the team over time. The alternative is also true: a culture of sink-or-swim, where junior pilots are ignored or actively discouraged, produces pilots who are either dependent on authority or recklessly independent because they have never had their judgment developed. The quality of the next generation of ROV pilots is, in a real sense, your professional responsibility as a senior. Take it seriously.