Kerrie Forster, Safety Forum Chairman
Earlier this month, we held the latest meeting of our joint offshore wind and NWA Safety Forum at the Ergo Renewable Energy Centre in Hessle. This second edition of the forum saw the official launch of our ‘Understanding Fatigue’ poster campaign, as well as the customary safety pause and a series of presentations regarding safety within the industry.
The forum was attended by 40 delegates from across the industry. In addition to NWA members, various stakeholders were present at the event, including wind farm operators, law firms and non-member vessel operators.
New Codes for Offshore Workboat Practices
The day opened with two presentations from the UK Maritime Coastguard Agency, “Implementation of the IMDG Dangerous Goods Code onboard Offshore Energy Service Vessels” and “The new Workboat Code: a practical look at how it will affect the OESV industry”.
Both presentations gave a thorough explanation of the codes and their backgrounds, as well as the operational and administrative changes they cause and the desired outcome from their correct implementation.
Redesigning Offshore Wind Turbine Boat Landings
Will Hancock, representing the Carbon Trust, then presented some insights into the work of the Offshore Wind Accelerator program, which is aiming to increase offshore wind efficiency through an advanced study of offshore wind turbine boat landings, with a view to improving and to a degree standardising future designs to improve the operating envelope for CTVs.
Those interested in helping with this project can help out by completing a short form for data collection purposes – which can be found on this page.
The aim of the research is to gain an understanding of current OESV specifications so that future designs can be steered to a more standardised model, which will increase asset compatibility and reduce the overall cost of Offshore Wind.
More information about the work of the Offshore Wind Accelerator can be found on the Carbon Trust website.
Analysing safety trends
Mark Ranson, Secretary of the NWA, gave a presentation on the 2016 and 2017 workboat safety data, showing the significant trends and explanations revealed by the association’s 3rd and 4th year of safety data.
Mark explained that now that we have several years of safety data, trends and peaks related to the collected data and the causes behind such events can be used in sourcing key discussion subjects for the NWA safety forum in the future, thereby creating a more specific and targeted agenda for future forums.
This led onto the official launch of the NWA’s ‘Understanding Fatigue’ poster campaign. A large number of the posters were distributed and the goals and objectives of the campaign were highlighted. This poster was co-sponsored by the MCA and Shipowners P&I Club, who will also be promoting it through their media outlets.
Future Campaigns and Safety Pause
Finally, future campaigns were discussed. The key topics raised were in-port operational standards (including safe access, moorings and basic Seamanship skills), and a revision of the NWA OESV good practice guidelines.
According to custom, a “Safety Pause” was held, in which open safety debate and experience sharing was promoted in order to spread cross-industry awareness of safety issues. An update of NWA work outside of the safety forum was also provided to attendees. This included news from other NWA committees, important industry information and feedback from presentations at other trade-based safety events and seminars.
Next time…
As always, we would like to thank the many companies and organisations that make the safety forum such an important platform for discussing safety issues within the offshore wind industry. Our thanks is extended, as ever, to all our members and non-members who make these forums such engaging events.
The next internal safety forum is planned to be held on the 7th November at JPMA Hoylake, with another wind-focused safety forum planned for Q1 2019 depending on location availability.
2018-09-27 09:00:00.0