Engineering Matters Podcats
Accelerating offshore wind construction
Published
26 May 2023
The next decade will see an unprecedented level of offshore energy construction. To achieve the 2035 emissions targets adopted by many governments, the offshore industry will need to build thousands of turbines. Each of these must be secured by appropriate foundations and anchors, often in unmapped areas of the seabed, much deeper than those that have been used before.
Achieving the pace of construction needed will strain a sector with some hard limits on its capacity. New surveying vessels, and more expert engineers and surveyors, would take years to build or train. Instead, new tools and techniques are needed that can each contribute to cutting construction and surveying time.
In this episode, we will learn about some of the physical and digital tools that are being used by wind farm developers to speed up their work. These include a new vertical boring system, similar to a tunnel boring machine, that can be used to efficiently prepare the seabed for foundations; vision technology, which can help ensure work is conducted with precision; and new digital platforms that can help project stakeholders make sense of the massive amount of historical and near real-time data they hold of sites to gain early insights, anywhere, anytime, on land and at sea.
Guests
Peter Richards, Designer and Chief Engineer, Fugro
Sjoerd Butter, Product Owner Vision Technologies, Fugro
Jason Smith, Global Director, Geo-Data Analysis & Geoconsulting, Fugro
Kathryn Rovang, Senior Geoscientist and Global Product Owner VirGeo, Fugro
Partner
This episode was produced in partnership with Engineering Matters
Resources
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