‘Sea ambulance’ service for wind farms

Dedicated A J Woods teams have already passed all shore based assessments and are undertaking three days of final ‘live’ assessments at sea this month. These will involve rescues from two offshore wind farm substations. The first will simulate a heart attack combined with a fall from height, in which a team will stabilise the casualty and rescue him to the wind farm support vessel from which they operate. The second exercise will involve an electrocution within the confines of the substation, again involving stabilising and rescue to the support vessel. The equipment used in these simulations is authentic and, should the exercises prove successful, the teams will go into active service immediately.

A J Woods has teams of maintenance staff operating from four workboats on a daily basis, attending the Greater Gabbard wind farm every day that operations are underway. The 500 MW farm will feature 140 turbines when fully operational in 2012. Six A J Woods personnel have been trained in emergency response and one of the four workboats will be nominated on a permanent basis to carry the equipment. There will be at least three trained personnel on that boat every time it leaves port. If called upon to carry out a rescue, this team is likely to be first on site and will stabilise the casualty, rescuing him or her back to the vessel for either return to shore or mid-ocean transfer.

The vessels involved are Windcat Mk 2 wind farm support vessels operated by Windcat Workboats, which has offices in both the UK and the Netherlands, servicing British, Dutch, Belgian, Danish and German offshore wind farms. Plans are in the pipeline to expand the initial Greater Gabbard coverage to other offshore wind farms.

A J Woods Engineering is BSI ISO 9001 accredited and has its own Health and Safety Management System. Its health and safety department concurred with counterparts at wind farm operators Scottish & Southern Energy and RWE npower renewable to determine that such a service was fundamental for Greater Gabbard.

A J Woods’ involvement with offshore wind farms began when designing a platform for client MT Hojgaart which would allow a monopile to be shortened at the Gunfleet Sands wind farm. This involved training staff to work offshore and provided opportunities to tender for other work in the sector. The company’s Harwich location sees it well placed for a variety of wind farm related works while its workshop can design, manufacture and deliver components in rapid response support of its offshore teams.

The A J Woods ‘sea ambulance’ teams have received specialist training from Heightworks Ltd for working at height, rescue for wind turbine generators, rope rescue for wind turbine generators, confined space working and emergency evacuation, confined space self contained breathing apparatus, emergency medical response at height, and HSE first aid at work.