SPOWTT: Improving the safety and productivity of offshore wind technician transit

Abstract

This paper describes the SPOWTT project. The intention of this project was to understand how sailing by crew transfer vessel (CTVs) to offshore wind farms affects the mental and physical wellbeing of individuals on board. The focus was on quantifying this impact, understanding the key drivers, with an aim to ensuring personnel can arrive to the wind turbines in a fit state to work safely and effectively. Impacts looked at subjective state beyond simply vomiting. Key results include the ability now to predict vessel motions from given Metocean conditions and vessel designs. We also discovered that the impact of vessel motions on seasickness is different for different symptoms and is driven not only by vertical z-axis accelerations but also by certain frequencies of motion in the y-axis. Frequencies other than 0.16 Hz were found to be impactful, and x-axis movements appeared to have a longer-lasting effect on the day's work. Through the formulation of a new, evidence-based understanding of seasickness, we have created an operational planning tool, designed to have a direct benefit on the safety and productivity of offshore wind farm operations.

Assessing the Welfare of Technicians during Transits to Offshore Wind Farms

“…This research combined the use of operational sea-state data licenced from the Copernicus Marine Service (marine.copernicus.eu, accessed 22 March 2022), and secondary operational in situ data from vessel motion monitoring systems (VMMS) deployed on 12 participating crew transfer vessels ranging in hull length from 18 m to 24 m. The VMMS measured acceleration data in six degrees of freedom, vessel speed, vessel heading, and GPS location data with time stamps. The VMMS was developed, calibrated, and deployed by BMO Offshore [27], a data solution company delivering marine-based operational information and decision support systems, and was made available to this research from the 'Safety and Productivity of Offshore Wind Technician Transit' (SPOWTT), project which was aimed at improving the safety and productivity of offshore turbine technicians [28]. The data collection process in this research commenced in January 2019 and ended in October of the same year, covering eight months, and resulting in eight hundred and fifty (nt = 850) defined O&M transit days after data processing and cleaning.…”

“…In addition, the comfort thresholds presented in the ISO 2631-1 are based on dated experimental studies [26] which might not be suitable for current assessments or suited to measurements on CTVs. Furthermore, MSI, as stated in Section 1, is the incidence of vomiting (a symptom of motion sickness) and does not account for other symptoms of motion sickness including sweating, changes in temperature, headaches [28], or other susceptibility factors associated with motion sickness such as temperature and a lack of visual reference [43]. This is highlighted in a recent publication by [43], who suggested improvements to the international standard to include more dimensions of motion sickness.…”

“…For this reason, some assumptions had to be made within the course of this research regarding the calibration of the accelerometers in the VMMS and the placement of the VMMS on the participating vessels, which may have created errors due to the physical constraints of the device and the location of the device in relation to the personnel on board. The assumptions were made based on informal requests to the researchers within the original study, as well as the publication from the study [28]. In addition to this, the research objective had to be amended to the dataset available, which restricted the type of research questions generated for the project.…”