Avoiding Injury due to Manual Handling during Bolt Installation

The Innovation Exchange is supporting G+, a member organisation containing the World’s major offshore wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers, to find solutions for the industry’s lifting and manual handling challenge. G+ and its members wish to engage innovators to find a solutions to mitigate potential health and safety incidents due to heavy lifting and manual handling challenges associated with bolt fixing activities in offshore wind.

Opportunity

Challenge opens

20/05/2024

Challenge closes

31/07/2024

Benefit

Selected solution provider(s) may have the opportunity to present their solution to industry at the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organisation Board meeting in September 2024. It is also possible that further activities may be undertaken by members of the G+, such as product trials. This is not guaranteed and will be solely at the discretion of G+ members.

Background

The G+ Organisation

G+ is the global health and safety organisation for the offshore wind industry, bringing together the World’s major offshore wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers to pursue shared goals and outcomes. It is run in partnership with the Energy Institute, which provides the secretariat and supports its work.

The G+ has four main work areas:

  • Incident data reporting
  • Good practice guidance
  • Safe by Design workshops
  • Learning from incidents.

Offshore Wind Farm Installation 

The UK is a global leader in offshore wind with around 14 Gigawatts of operational offshore wind farms in UK waters. 
All offshore wind farms require significant infrastructure for installation processes to be complete. There is high demand for large vessels, human resource, and tooling to enable manoeuvre and installation of large components.
The costs associated with offshore wind farm installation are high, with jack up vessel chart rates costing up to £250k per day. Any delays during installation can cause large budget overruns. Equally, any efficiencies gained in the installation process can create large savings for an offshore wind farm developer.

Figure 1: Offshore wind farm installation in progress 

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