G9 Issues Report on Offshore Wind Transfer Design Issues

A report resulting from the G9 Offshore Wind Health and Safety Association (G9)’s first Safe by Design workshop is now available.

The report explores a number of key topics associated with the transfer of personnel from a Crew Transfer Vessel to a transition piece via the traditional push on method (including design of the transfer connector, new designs in access systems and boat landing design).

With the G9 established as an authority on offshore wind Health and Safety issues, in 2014, the Crown Estate asked the G9 to take over the running and delivery of the Safe by Design workshops.

The Crown Estate had previously run workshop covering topics such as diving operations, lifting operations, wind turbine design and installation and the safe optimisation of marine operations.

Frank Monaghan, Health and Safety Director at ScottishPower Renewables, said: “The Safe by Design workshops are intended as a catalyst for attendees to network on Health and Safety improvements and develop local and industry Health and Safety initiatives. This first report is an important milestone for the G9 and is the beginning of the journey in terms of building the G9 portfolio of Safe by Design reports. By providing a forum for developers, operators, OEMs, service providers and academia to focus on offshore wind farm design phase issues, we can investigate new technologies and innovations to improve health and safety performance and also drive responsible cost reduction in the industry.”

By bringing these events into the G9 work programme, the G9 aims to explore the high priority industry operations and technologies with a focus on Safe by Design principles. As with this workshop, future G9 Safe by Design workshops will examine the current design controls relating to a current industry issue, discuss where current design has potentially failed, identify opportunities for improvement and then seek to demonstrate the risk reduction to be gained from these.

The outputs from these workshops will be made freely available on the G9 website to be used as a reference by the industry.

Image: Umoe Mandal (Illustration)