Construction Phase Modelling

GL Garrad Hassan has unrivalled experience in providing project management support to offshore wind farm developers. Its experts understand the complex engineering challenge that offshore wind project construction represents.

Of paramount importance, is the recognition of the inter-related issues surrounding any supply chain constraints, the commercial considerations, project programme dependencies and Health and Safety challenges of working in the offshore environment. These issues present a considerable management responsibility to a project developer. GL Garrad Hassan considers the offshore construction aspects of the build programme in much greater detail and takes the lead on ensuring technical interfaces between contractors are well defined from the outset of the procurement phase.

In further support of to this, GL Garrad Hassan has developed the 'Optimise Offshore Construction' (O2C) model, to investigate the impact of the above issues on the efficiency of the complete wind project build programme. The model is based on a Monte-Carlo approach, with all offshore operations simulated in the time domain against a site specific Metocean climate. Resulting operation durations are combined with project specific constraints (project resourcing levels, mobilisation dates, grid connections etc.), to examine the economic performance and construction duration for development.

Results are provided within a 'Graphical User Interface' (GUI), providing project owners and their contractors with an insight into the potential temporal and economic implications of adopting different contracting/working strategies. The GUI also provides a novel method for the visualisation of the project build, providing a clearer understanding of the inter-dependent nature of the construction programme and how these dependencies can be optimised to improve economic viability.