Offshore Balance of Plant - Foundations and Cables

Session B10 | Day 3, Thurs 27 Oct, 13.30-15.00 | Charter 1, Ground Floor


This session looks at emerging foundation types and better ways of installing cables.

• Chair: Rob Waddington, PMSS
• Petter Jonathan Karal, Seatower AS
• Alan Bromage, The Concrete Centre
• Dominic Stratton, SeaRoc Ltd and Gary Aylmer, Canyon Offshore Ltd
• John Davies, Global Marine Systems Ltd.

Chair: Rob Waddington, Managing Director, PMSS and Chair of the RenewableUK Operations & Asset Management Working Group Rob Waddington was co-founder of PMSS and has contributed significantly to building the success of the company. He has over twenty years’ experience in the power generation industry and has played a significant role in the emergence and maturing of the renewables sector, having managed the construction of numerous wind energy projects throughout the UK and mainland Europe. Rob has acted in the roles of Project Manager and Owner’s / Banks Engineer for wind farm development and construction as well as all H&S roles under the CDM Regulations in a long succession of renewable energy projects making him a well respected figure in the industry.

Speaker: Petter Jonathan Karal, CEO, Seatower AS Start-to-End Efficiency in Large-Turbine, Deeper-Water Foundation Deployment Results from the Norwegian Research Council’s RENERGI R&D programme show a way of achieving efficiency in all phases of large-scale non-monopile foundation projects. Crucially, the proposed solutions achieve a reliable flow in the offshore work. The approach a hybrid concrete-steel gravity base foundation that lends itself to not just serial production, but also efficient serial installation. Intrinsic buoyancy removes the need for offshore lifting. Application of steel skirts removes the need for seabed levelling and gravel-bedding. Crucially for reliable offshore work flow, the resulting design allows for installation methods that tolerate high waves and are fast. Petter J. Karal is co-founder and CEO of Seatower AS, a European company specializing in foundations for offshore wind. He holds an MSc in Economics from NHH in Bergen, an EU masters in business (CEMS), and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Before Seatower, Karal co-founded and built several technology-based businesses, including offshore oil & gas company Anchor Contracting. Karal has previously served as EVP of Findexa, Business Unit Manager at Eniro, and as top management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Speaker: Alan Bromage, Consultant, The Concrete Centre The Development of Innovative Solutions for Offshore Wind Gravity Foundations Concrete Gravity Foundations for Offshore Wind Farms provide a cost competitive solution in water depths of 20m and above. A number of differing gravity solutions have been developed by major construction consortia to address not only solutions for the UK market but also to consider applicability across all European sites. The Concrete Centre has established a Special Interest Group intended to provide a focus for the development of the market for the Design, Construction and Installation of Concrete Gravity Foundations. The work of this group in understanding the generic benefits of Gravity Foundations will be included within the presentation. All of the major groups who have developed innovative gravity solutions are represented within the Special Interest Group and the presentation will provide an overview of the majority of the currently available solutions. Alan Bromage, a Fellow of The Institution of Civil Engineers, has been involved in the wind industry for several years. In his role as Head of Civil Engineering at The Concrete Centre he was involved in the development of innovative concrete gravity foundations for offshore wind farms. He has recently set up a Special Interest Group for companies involved in this sector to facilitate the use of concrete gravity foundations for all current UK offshore wind farm developments.

Speaker: Dominic Stratton, GIS Manager, SeaRoc Ltd and Gary Aylmer, General Manager, Offshore Renewable Energy, Canyon Offshore Ltd Meeting The Challenges of Wind Farm Cable Burial with Effective and Reliable Solutions Focusing on the challenges developers and contractors face for inter-array and export cable burial this presentation will examines the need for continual innovation and development by contractors to further improve the productivity and reliability of cable laying operations; the commercial and technical risks resulting from challenging burial requirements and how these can be overcome by developers; and the skill sets offered by Canyon and SeaRoc contributing to a step change in the offshore cable installation sector by providing specialist cable burial expertise combined with innovative data collection and presentation methods leading to reduced risk in the offshore cable installation sector. With an MSc in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and extensive industry experience Dominic is highly experienced in delivering data management and GIS services for renewable energy developments. His project involvement includes numerous offshore/onshore wind farms and tidal projects. In his role Dominic utilises specialist GIS management and analysis tools and oversees the development of custom data organisation and web mapping applications to deliver high quality data management, analysis, support and dissemination services to project teams and stakeholders. and excellent stakeholder interaction and support. Dominic has been heavily involved in the development of the SeaPlanner system since 2006. Gary has spent over 25 years in the marine world, starting with 7 years in the RN, followed by 13 years in the submarine telecoms industry moving from Subsea Tech – Offshore Installation Manager (OIM), he was OIM for Horns Rev 1 as well as a number of inter-country fibre optic connection projects. Moving to Canyon Offshore in 2003 to head up the Oil & Gas Trenching Division, Gary has also been instrumental in the development of the new i-Trencher heavy soils trencher & the new T1200 jet trencher.

Speaker: John Davies, Global Marine Systems Ltd. Cable Installation Planning & Execution: Best Practices Offshore wind has seen many projects where subsea cable installation has not been considered fully at project outset. This presentation will walk through planning areas which are often overlooked relative to their impact on cable installation such as: detailed route geology, common hazards, burial depth risk, permitting, installation process and procedure, vessel & equipment availability. The consequences of not taking full consideration of these risks early are evident from a number of significant cost and time overruns, quality issues, contractual claims and insurance incidents that can be observed in the European market.