About Open Ocean Group
Why this practice exists
Yacht ownership is one of the few significant private asset classes in which owners routinely make decisions without independent professional advice. In commercial property, owners of meaningful assets retain chartered surveyors. In aviation, owners retain independent technical advisors and operations consultants.
In fine art, owners retain independent valuers and conservators. In wealth management generally, the fiduciary advisory model is the established standard. In yacht ownership, by contrast, the parties advising the owner are typically the parties also profiting from the owner's decisions: the broker who advises on purchase also collects the commission, the management company that recommends contractors also takes procurement margins on their work, the captain who selects suppliers may receive informal compensation from those suppliers, the insurance broker placing cover may receive undisclosed commissions from the underwriter.
None of this is necessarily improper. But the absence of any independent layer in the structure leaves owners exposed in ways that owners of comparable assets elsewhere would find unfamiliar.
Open Ocean Group exists to provide that independent layer.
Open Ocean Group operates under documented conflict-of-interest and independence policies. We carry professional indemnity insurance and maintain documented engagement letters for every advisory matter.
Principal
Lazaros Mavridis is an Australian and Greek (EU) national with three decades of regulated technical advisory experience. He founded his first independent advisory practice in 1996 and has since founded or co-founded four advisory businesses across building surveying, regulatory consulting, online compliance services, and remedial project management. Most recently, he served as General Manager — Remedial Strata for Johns Lyng Group (ASX-listed), where he built and led the Victorian remedial construction business unit.
His direct professional experience includes:
Statutory building surveying with authority to issue permits, orders, and notices under Australian building legislation
Technical due diligence on commercial, institutional, and government buildings, including projects for JLL, CB Richard Ellis, the Department of Defence, NAB, Telstra, and RMIT
Project management of major remediation works including cladding, water ingress, fire services, and structural defect remediation across projects ranging from AUD 12m to AUD 90m in scope
National standards committee participation and regulatory advisory work
He holds a Bachelor of Technology in Building Surveying, a Graduate Diploma in Engineering (Construction and Risk Management), and a Master of Facility Management. He is reading for an LLB at Swinburne University of Technology and holds a Diploma in Yacht Brokerage from the Maritime Training Academy. He is pursuing membership of the International Institute of Marine Surveying (IIMS).
He speaks English, Greek, and French.
Open Ocean Group extends his existing advisory practice into yacht ownership — an asset class for which the chartered surveying methodology and independent advisory tradition is well-suited but historically absent.
Geography and practice
This practice operates internationally, with particular focus on the Mediterranean, where the principal holds Greek nationality and maintains a family base in Europe. Working languages are English, Greek, and French.
Engagements are accepted globally.