Purpose
The Moray Firth (East) Offshore Wind Farm is an exciting project which will see the installation of approximately 100 wind turbines located offshore. Once complete, this will be Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm and generate enough electricity for approximately one million homes.
What we did
We were contracted to deliver two phases of this overall scheme. During the first phase, we carried out an initial design FEED study as part of the preferred bidder agreement works. This consisted of an overall design cable system and Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD), ground investigations (topographical surveys, trial holes, boreholes, WAC testing and TR testing), route feasibility reports as well as health, safety, environmental and quality (HSEQ) plans for the main construction works.
During the second phase, we designed, supplied, installed and tested the following circuits: three 33kV onshore substations, three 400kV onshore substations, fifteen 220kV onshore substations, six 66kV offshore platforms, and six 220kV offshore platforms.
Project successes
We have successfully delivered this major cross country cable installation project to excellent HSEQ standards and also applied our behavioural safety programme, Safety Ripple. This included delivering safety best practices, such as using temporary works tags to safely cross 96 ditch crossings, with an accident frequency rate of 0.
We worked tirelessly to ensure that the local community were engaged in the project's progress and, in collaboration with Siemens, sought out opportunities to add social value. An example is the Siemens Roller Coaster Challenge; a STEM challenge for 10 local schools that Siemens and VolkerInfra launched together. Our senior managers then provided training to the school children and judged their creations.
We forged strong working relationships with the local stakeholders and received excellent feedback from Whitehill's community council (Moray Firth) who commented that, "Moray East contractors, Siemens and VolkerInfra, are 110% better than any other contractor we have encountered.”