PLANNING YOUR DAY
Agenda
This agenda is now confirmed but minor changes may made in the lead up to the event.
We’re expecting many of our delegates and presenters to arrive on the Monday, so we’re planning a sponsored drinks, dinner and networking event in central Bristol that evening. There will also be an informal meetup on Tuesday evening after the conference for those still in the city. Details will be shared closer to the conference.
NETWORKING
Pre-conference networking dinner and drinks
6:00pm – late – Monday 30th September
Join us on the evening before the conference on Monday 30th September for complementary dinner and drinks. Taking place at Mud Dock in central Bristol, seize the opportunity for candid conversations with other technically specialised attendees.
ARRIVALS
Registration and Coffee
9:00am – 9:30am
INTRO
Welcome from Karl Davis of Empire Engineering
9:30am – 9:45am
TALK – SITE DEFINITION
Innovation in Metocean Data
09:45am – 10:00am
Nick Elderfield, Managing Director at DHI Water Environments UK
Starting an offshore wind project requires a solid foundation in many ways. Reliable and detailed metocean data is key in the early stages of site definition: providing relevant parameters to assess everything from initial boat landing orientations to scour hole development. With a solid foundation in metocean data it is then possible to further optimise the detailed design for aspects such as fatigue loading on the structure itself and ancillary data.
DHI has over 25 years working with the offshore wind industry and more than 50 years of handling and producing metocean data around the world. Recent innovations have included the launching of online tools providing rapid access to high-quality data, incorporating more of the key physics relevant to wind turbine foundation design into numerical models and the development of advanced tools for metocean analysis. All of these aspects have led to an acceleration of the metocean data establishment and analysis tasks for Offshore Wind projects with a reduction in uncertainties and streamlined certification. The talk will provide some more detail on the developments and how they can support the ongoing cost and time reductions needed to make offshore wind the certain choice for future renewable energy.
Whilst the benefits are being felt at the design stages of offshore wind projects, are developers truly getting the best value out of the data in the longer term? Using the early foundations of metocean assessment can also have benefits through the construction and operation stages. Some of the next steps will be highlighted.
TALK – SITE DEFINITION
Zonal Approach to Ground Modelling
10:00am – 10:15am
Mark Finch, Managing Director & Principal Geotechnical Engineer at Ternan Energy
Project development plans change – constantly. How can site investigations be phased and optimised to address the challenges of numerous changing requirements, investment decisions and the like?
High quality ground information is needed at the right time and at the right price – particularly in the early stages of the project when investment is at risk. A phased zonal approach to site definition is probably the answer. This presentation asks – and tries to answer – the difficult questions around site investigation. What, when, why (and maybe even who)?
Site investigation may not be a significant expense compared to the overall project cost, but it is very easy to not add value if you fail to lock in significant risks at an early stage.
Lots of questions and (hopefully) some practical answers. We need to talk about the soil……
TALK – SITE DEFINITION
Geotechnical Characterisation for FEA
10:15am – 10:30am
Mike Rattley, Principal Geotechnical Engineer Fugro
Is the industries approach to geotechnical characterisation efficiently addressing the requirements of FEA-based design? What are we really modelling and why? How can we reduce uncertainty and aid optimisation? This presentation will address all of these questions and propose some practical solutions.
TALK – SITE DEFINITION
The use of Monitoring Data from past projects on Geotechnical Design
10:30am – 10:45am
Annelies Demuynck, Deputy COO at Otary RS nv
A presentation on the use of monitoring data of the Rentel windfarm for optimising the soil profiles in Mermaid and Seastar (SeaMade), looking at the close dialogue between certifier, detailed designer and employer, alongside focus upon the development of those two windfarms.
TALK – CONCEPT AND FEED DESIGN
FATHOM, Empire’s New Foundation Design Tool
10:45am – 11:00am
Nick Howard, Partner and Principal Engineer at Empire Engineering
FATHOM is a bespoke tool developed and coded by Empire Engineering for Foundations Concept and FEED level design. Nick will be giving a demonstration of this new and powerful tool which approaches the problem in an innovative way using Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (and probably a Flux Capacitor).
BREAK
Coffee and Cake
11:00am – 11:20am
A chance to network and exchange ideas over good coffee and delicious couture cakes.
MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Session 1:
The Modular Suction Bucket – Tales from Successful Sea Trials
11:20am – 12:00pm
Tim Drummen, Business Development / Technical Lead at Universal Foundation A/S
Universal Foundation, together with their partners Siemens Gamesa and Aalborg University, performed 13 successful trial installations with a modular suction bucket in May 2019. Join this breakout session to learn more about the innovative design of this modular suction bucket. Learn how the design consists of several pre-bended coiled steel plates that are connected with bolts. Discuss how this technology is expected to achieve a construction cost reduction of 30% to 40%. Hear how the trial installations proved the robustness and the stability of the concept in difficult soils.
MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Session 2:
Lender’s Technical Advisors Views
11:20am – 12:00pm
Colin Morgan, Founding Partner at Everoze
Ioannis Lessis, Wind Team Leader at Mott MacDonald
This breakout session will cover the lender’s expectations on foundation structure design and anticipated risk profiles at financial close. Discussion will focus on common shortfalls from the designer’s side that could affect planned dates of financing (expect a few interesting anecdotes!). Foreseen challenges in relation to floating foundation and commercialistion of the concept will also be covered in this session.
MORNING BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Session 3:
System Modelling of Soils and Structures
11:20am – 12:00pm
Paul Doherty, Managing Director of GDGeo
Will Collier, Senior Engineer at DNV-GL
Join this breakout session to discuss in detail MP optimisation and damping analysis, alongside conversation and debate around damping methods of superelement support structures.
TALK – DETAILED DESIGN
Designing Foundations to be “Born in the USA”
12:15pm – 12:30pm
Danny Bonnett, Associate Director at Wood Thilsted
To design the first utility scale offshore wind project in the USA, Wood Thilsted teamed up with Engineering giant WSP to perform the detailed design. An odd couple? Not so. Danny will explain more, and delve into some of the interesting details around soil-structure interaction, corrosion protection and array cable installation
TALK – DETAILED DESIGN
FE analysis of monopiles – advances modelling of soil structure interaction
12:30pm – 12:45pm
Henrietta Ridgeon, Associate Director for Arup
As the industry continues to drive down costs in the offshore wind industry, structural and geotechnical engineers need to work together to optimise the detailed design of the emerging foundation solutions. Arup is at the forefront of this work and presents three areas where significant progress has been made:
- Detailed FE analysis of XL monopiles to justify in-service and installation performance.
- Geotechnical modelling of pore pressure build up around monopiles under cyclic loading.
- Design considerations for monopiles in seismic regions (where much of the market growth is predicted).
TALK – DETAILED DESIGN
Monopiles configuration development and how design decisions impact assessment
12:45pm – 1:00pm
Aashraya Shankar, Engineer for Atkins
Atkins assesses the impact of varying different parameters affecting MP foundation design across a windfarm and how this informs decisions to obtain optimised designs and minimise LCOE or costs.
BREAK
Lunch
1:00pm – 2:00pm
TALK – CERTIFICATION
Impacts of the changes to DNV-GL-ST-0126
2:00pm – 2:15pm
Dan Butterworth, Head of Section, Renewables Certification for DNV-GL
Unique insight into recent changes to the governing standards for offshore wind farm foundations (DNV-GL-ST-0126), as well as DNV-GL’s latest views of where further research or joint industry projects would be beneficial to the industry.
TALK – FABRICATION
Serial Production of Foundations
2:15pm – 2:30pm
Eric Finé, Business Development Manager at Smulders
Smulders present the importance of logistics in foundations serial production.
TALK – INSTALLATION
Grout Free Pin-Pile Connection
2:30pm – 2:45pm
Iain Stevens, Managing Director for Cedeco
Cedeco will publicly reveal for the first time its grout-free pin-to-pile connector, an innovation which recently won the support of ORE Catapult. Managing Director, Iain Steven, will talk through the technology and how Cedeco, a micro SME, are leading a collaboration between ORE Catapult, ScottishPower Renewables and Atkins Ltd to test the technology’s suitability for market.
TALK – TRANSPORT AND INSTALLATION
Advancement in Monopile Installation
2:45pm – 3:00pm
Alan Macleay, Engineering Director for Seaway7
Seaway7 will reveal various innovative methods that have been developed for driving MPs from floating installation vessels.
TALK – TRANSPORT AND INSTALLATION
Evolution of the Transition Piece Cover
3:00pm – 3:15pm
Dimitrios Evangelopoulos, Research Manager at Toro Structures
Drawing on decades of experience and innovation, designing protective shelters for all types of equipment across many industry sectors, Toro has created the ultimate transition piece protection solution.
Dimitrios will be presenting Toro’s exciting new design, including a full scale TP cover on-site to get up close and personal with.
BREAK
Coffee and Cake
3:15pm – 3:35pm
A chance to network and exchange ideas over good coffee and delicious couture cakes.
AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Sessions 1:
SeaPlanner and Innovations in O&M Practice
3:35pm – 4:15pm
Graham Howe and Amanda Forbes, SeaRoc
Join SeaRoc at this roundtable discussion regarding the centralisation of operations to give economics of scale. Conversation will include the evolution of project managers entering from other sectors and adapting to offshore wind, alongside innovations in methodology and their potential impacts. They will use real world examples such as robotics (in particular unmanned vessels) and drone blade inspections (featuring the work of Natural Power) to facilitate discussion.
AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Session 2:
Cost Savings by Implementing Advanced Geotechnical Design Approaches at the Seastar OWF, Belgium
3:35pm – 4:15pm
Joe Hilton, General Manager at Sea and Land Project Engineering
Scott Whyte, Offshore Geotechnical Engineer for Fugro
Discussion will focus on detailed structural design using a combination of time domain and spectral dynamic analysis techniques. Recommendations from the Pile Soil Analysis (PISA) joint industry project (Byrne et al., 2017) to develop site-specific soil reaction curves will be considered. Join the discussion to consider how the application of new geotechnical methodologies presents a number of challenges when applied in design projects with respect to the site characterisation for calibration of the numerical model, suitable rigorous approaches to consider cyclic loading and a suitable workflow for application of site-specific reaction curves (e.g. PISA type approach) within detailed structural analysis. Work presented will include a detailed description of the geotechnical and structural design analysis performed for the Seastar and Mermaid offshore substation platform, Belgium Sector North Sea.
AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSION
Parallel Session 3:
Contracting Strategies
3:35pm – 4:15pm
Lars Kjuul Kristensen, Senior Consultant and Founder at Kjuul Consulting
Alfonso Alvarez, Foundations Package Manager for Empire Engineering
Karl Davis, Managing Director for Empire Engineering
The use of EPCI contracts versus multi-contracting approaches will be presented, with a focus on why certain approaches are preferred and what the risks and benefits of these strategies are to developers, contractors and investors.
TALK – WIND TURBINE OEMs
The OEM’s role for foundation design optimization
4:30pm – 4:45pm
Kenji Sato, Head of LAC & Tower Design for MHI Vestas Offshore Wind
TALK – WIND TURBINE OEMs
How Intergrated Engineering Approaches Enable Support Structure Optimisation
4:45pm – 5:00pm
Sven Voormeeren, Head of Primary Structure Design at Siemens Gamesa
In this talk, it will be addressed how Siemens Gamesa, as a wind turbine supplier, is supporting the optimisation of the support structures for its offshore turbines. The key is in taking an integrated engineering approach, in which the calculation of environmental (waves, sea ice, …) and turbine loads as well as teh design of the tower and foundation structure is combined. The different topics will be illustrated with real life examples.
OUTRO
Closing Remarks
Time: 5:00pm – 5:15pm
OUTRO
Networking
Time: 6:00pm – late
Join us at the Mud Dock, a short walking distance from MShed, to continue discussions over a local Bristol craft beer or glass of vino.