Saving critical minutes during the construction of offshore wind farms can also save large amounts of money. The skill is in ensuring that the right people are always in the right place at the right time – and that no-one else is delayed by avoidable bottlenecks.
Small delays with big consequences
Good marine coordination on complex projects pivots around knowing where problems are most likely to occur and how to react and recover promptly. An example is cable-pulling. Up to ten different boats can often be involved. Both men and vessels are offshore at high day-rates.
Plans go wrong. One snarl-up and narrow tidal windows are easily missed. Costs mount. Re-scheduling can be difficult. Vessels may be committed to moving on to other jobs elsewhere. Availability becomes a problem. Tempers fray. Delays and impacts spiral quickly.
Diving is a case in question. When one of the boats has a full diving package on board, safe bottom-time for divers can be down to minutes. During slack water on a spring tide, work may only be possible for as little as half an hour – or two hours of productive time daily. However, there is another way.
Taking control
The alternative scenario is that with foresight, experience and the ability to constantly have back-up plans in mind, risks and costs can be continuously designed out of the programme. This principle lies behind Green Marine Solution’s (GMS) modern approach to marine coordination.
“Coordination is about much more than just watch-keeping,” says GMS MD, Justin Moseley. “It is important that coordinators understand the whole operation and know that they have the power to ask the right questions and intervene if the answers are wrong.”
“During cable-laying at Greater Gabbard Wind Farm, we saved the operator an estimated €300,000 in a single day in a sensitive exercise involving ten vessels by carefully programming-out potential queues and log-jams. It’s vital to think ahead intelligently.”
“That is a representative figure for many typical projects when you take into account the full expense of having men, machinery and specialist boat-time all out of sync and an uncontrolled cascade of impacts.”
Time-served experience
Drawing on more than 50-years of direct offshore experience, GMS specialises in achieving the most cost-effective, time-efficient and well-coordinated use of valuable assets in all marine, port and vessel operations during the full life-cycle of any offshore project.
However, the company’s prime focus is on maintaining exemplary health & safety performance.