UXO project for 6 Alpha Associates

Once fully completed, the work will confirm that the prospective threat to installation activity presented by UXO has been reduced to as low as is reasonably practicable (ALARP) – the legal and safety standard for munitions risk management.

Over the course of its work, 6 Alpha delivered a desktop threat and risk assessment to assess the likely presence of UXO on the project site.

Simon Cooke, 6 Alpha’s founder and managing director, said “It is imperative that appropriate and reasonably practicable risk mitigation measures are not only put in place in line with reducing risks ALARP, but also with a strong focus on overall cost reduction for the industry.”

“We aim to ensure that UXO risk management solutions are being implemented as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible, whilst affording project safety.”

Once the nature of the prospective UXO threat had been identified, 6 Alpha subsequently worked to design a subsea survey in order to detect and to define potential UXO.

With European offshore wind projects being constructed in waters that have been subjected to either war fighting or munitions dumping, there is a widely recognised risk that projects may encounter UXO during their site investigation, construction and operations and maintenance phases.

Working with project partners Fugro and Boskalis, 6 Alpha is now processing raw survey data in order to ensure that only the most likely ferrous anomalies that might be considered as targets of interest are investigated.

By Alice Mason