Improving Safety and Productivity of Offshore Wind Technician Transit

Offshore technicians perform essential service to offshore wind turbines, which is sometimes planned and sometimes an unplanned response to faults. Planning this O&M is challenging because it is difficult to predict the weather sufficiently accurate to judge whether the sea conditions will allow the crew transfer vessels (CTVs) to sail and deliver the technicians to the turbine. Currently, there is limited information for making this decision. An added challenge is ensuring the safety and well-being of the technicians as they are transported in what can be very rough sea conditions because they have to perform complex tasks once transferred to the turbine.

Objective
The objective of this project is to produce an open-access decision-making framework that can be utilised by marine coordinators across the offshore wind (OSW) industry. By applying psychological and physiological methods from other sectors the well being of technicians as they transit to offshore wind turbines in different sea conditions will be assessed. In parallel, the motion of the boat and the underlying sea state will be measured. These data will be combined to create a model, and then a tool, that will support the authority that makes the decision to 1) launch, 2) not launch, or 3) to launch but only with certain control measures

Short description
The consortium represents the entire CTV value chain that needs to be involved in this project: provision and operation of CTVs, vessel monitoring systems, logistics planning tools and the technicians. Through eight work packages the consortium will develop and communicate the strategic decision-making model (WP5&8); at a tactical level historic and real-time data sources will be managed and analysed (WP2-4), and at an operational level the model will be turned into a tool for use in a commercial environment (WP6&7).

Results
The output of the SPOWTT project is an open-access decision-making framework that can be utilised by marine coordinators across the OSW industry. This will result in an increased turbine access which will lead to an increased turbine availability, reduced cost and improved productivity of O&M. It will address one of the most significant health and safety risk areas for offshore operation