Quality services for Moray East Offshore Wind Farm

The 950MW Moray East Wind Farm, 22km off the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland, will be capable of meeting around 40% of the total electricity demand in Scotland, enough to power 950,000 households. WSP provided quality management and inspection services to its developer, Moray Offshore Wind Farm East Limited (MOWEL).

Offshore wind turbines are complex systems and crucial elements such as fabricated structures, installed equipment and coatings must withstand the most demanding offshore environments. Knowledge gained from our experience on previous projects such as the 504MW Greater Gabbard, the 576MW Gwynt y Môr and 353MW Galloper wind farms informed our risk-based approach at Moray East. Because we understood where potential issues are likely to occur, we could target these areas for particular scrutiny.

Our risk-based approach enabled careful targeting of inspection visits to suppliers’ factories. With structures, equipment and components manufactured globally, multiple untargeted inspection visits could have seen project quality costs escalate over budget. So we assisted Moray East with weighing the risk against cost and agreed with them an inspection programme targeting the critical areas for mitigating risk. 

In the later stages of the project, the Covid-19 pandemic hampered international travel and the WSP team had to switch to working entirely remotely in the UK, using online conferencing applications and remote access to project documentation systems. This is an approach we are used to – specialist team members spread across the UK and Europe typically work remotely between inspection visits. To maintain the in-person surveillance effort required by MOWEL we engaged trusted sub-contract partners in some countries.

On completion of the site surveillance portion of work, we had performed 70 separate inspection visits with over 350 site inspection days across the full scope (Jackets, OSPs, WTGs) in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, UAE and UK.

Documentation reviews extended through the project lifecycle, from pre-fabrication through in-process and as-built records. WSP engaged with MOWEL and its main contractors to resolve issues and ensure that findings were tracked through to closure. 

From our position as an independent third party, we’ve been able to influence not only this project but the sector as a whole. Because the wind farm industry is less well established than those such as thermal power – with less well established quality systems – quality management is particularly important. In some cases, suppliers have changed their procedures in the light of issues we identified, the lessons learnt contributing to continual improvement in the sector.

For Moray East itself, our work will safeguard the lifetime value of the project as it generates competitively priced low-carbon electricity for decades to come. 

Photo shown does not depict Moray East Offshore Wind Farm.