Benoît Brière 

About Benoît Brière

Empire Engineering was delighted to have Benoît Brière join our team in 2022. Benoît first trained in aerospace engineering and naval architecture. He has over 10 years of floating wind experience. His experience is only matched by his passion for all things floating offshore wind. 

Education and early career 

Benoît’s first degree was in aerospace engineering. While he found the industry interesting, he was drawn to the offshore sector. The pull was a combination of the dynamism of the industry and his love of the sea.

Benoît is driven by the challenge of the green energy transition and this led him to decide to  study naval architecture.

After graduating from the University of Southampton, Benoît’s first job was working for an offshore wind consultancy in Denmark. At the time, the work was supporting the fast-growing German, Danish and British market. There was a lot of bottom-fixed offshore wind, but there was some floating wind on the horizon.

Professional Experience 

Benoît’s experience with floating began the year after the commissioning of WindFloat 1 in Portugal. He was involved as a tender engineer in a successful bid for the numerical modelling for Hywind Scotland. Benoît relished the complexity of the challenge and in his own words  ‘saw a kind of the beauty in it.’

Benoît went on to spend time based in Nantes with INNOSEA where he took on the tole of Project Engineer during which time he took on project management of floating wind concept designs, fatigue analysis of inter Array cables, tidal demonstration device development and a number of other offshore design packages. Benoît was promoted to Project Manager and later Business Unit Manager for Offshore Engineering.

After INNOSEA spent two years at Bardot Ocean, taking on a demanding role for a Sea Water Air Conditioning Project.

More recently, Benoît returned to INNOSEA, this time as Senior Project Manager before making the move to join Empire Engineering and launch our new Marseille office.

Why floating offshore wind? 

“The project that comes to mind is one that I managed from A to Z. It was a very challenging project involving the numerical modelling for a very innovative concept for floating wind. I saw the company that was developing its own breakthrough floater concept at a fair and initiated contact with them because their concept was exciting and very different to any existing technology.

 

The technical director told me he was struggling to find an off-the-shelf modelling software to advance its development. I said I could do it and managed the six-month project and developed a numerical modelling tool built on existing open-source technologies. We trained the company to use the software and did continuous training afterwards. They went on to test a small-scale prototype of their technology and attracted interest from a major utility company in Europe, which was very exciting.” 

Benoît’s Flipchart Friday Videos

The Frequency Domain

Wind Turbines vs Windmills