Physical health and wellbeing workstreams

Physical health as well as emotional health and wellbeing can affect an individual's work and their work can affect their health and wellbeing. In 2019 the G+ launched a workstream on physical and medical requirements with the end goal to support the development of harmonised international industry health standards that also include the physical capacity side of the tasks in offshore wind (OW). But there is also a growing concern across the health agenda about the psychological wellbeing, which can affect every part of society and often is difficult to identify and react to.

The G+ Focal Group is looking into this health theme in two dedicated workstreams. Together with the University of Portsmouth a critical task analysis has been undertaken based on the information provided by subject matter experts in G+ member companies to make sure these tasks are representative across all G+ countries. Where possible minimum operating procedures for these critical tasks have been established as well as preferred/viable physical fitness test procedures across G+ countries. This information is the base for the determination of the physical demands of the critical and essential tasks. This work is currently still ongoing. The next and final step in this project will be to propose validated physical fitness assessments for OW farm technicians. This work is expected to commence in 2021.

In cooperation with the University of  Hull  the G+ is currently undertaking work to support wellbeing and emotional health within OW. A series of interviews are conducted addressing challenges facing both Operation & Maintenance and construction workers. Aim of this first phase of the study is to develop a bespoke tool to assess stress factors for the OW industry, which will be open access and available industry wide. Based on this a comprehensive assessment can be carried out in the second phase of the project. This process aims to gather quantitative stress risk data alongside mental health and wellbeing data, to examine the nature and extent of specific stress risks and their relationships to health outcomes.

Assessment check-lists

All G+ good practice guidance documents represent the G+ interpretation of industry good practice based on the experience and information provided by our members and stakeholders and other international standards and practices. The documents are designed in a way that they can be reflected in the management systems of the member companies and others. Our members are committed to undertake self-assessments against checklists which are provided for all the existing

G+ documents. This process is currently being trialled within selected member companies and once approved, check lists will also be translated in different languages. Aim of this self-assessment is provide the ability to review compliance against an industry good practice standard.

Sharing learnings from incidents - Toolbox

G+ is delighted to announce that we are using Toolbox as a platform to disseminate lessons learnt from offshore wind incidents with the global offshore community.

Toolbox is a free to use web app which holds lessons learned and safety information of almost 500 incidents which have been shared by global energy companies with the aim of helping frontline workers get home safe. This tool is now available in English, French and Spanish, and will be soon available in Traditional Mandarin, Portuguese, and German.

The G+ has become an active contributor to Toolbox, sharing lessons learned from incidents that occur within the wind industry. We encourage the offshore wind supply chain to share safety alerts and their learnings with the G+ to be uploaded and shared globally via Toolbox.

For more information visit: https://www.gplusoffshorewind.com/work-programme/learning-from-incidents

Helicopter operations in support of the global offshore wind industry

Helicopters are increasingly being used in the offshore wind industry.

G+ is currently developing guidance to support the global offshore wind industry integrate helicopter operations safely into their projects, whether for routine logistical support, to meet a one-off need, or because helicopter assistance may be needed in an emergency. A draft guidance document was issued for consultation with a closing date of 19th October. We’re grateful for all input and we will look to then revise the document and publish the guidance.

Material handling

The G+ 2019 incident data report highlighted manual handling as the work process with the third highest number of incidents. The G+ Focal Group undertook a review of the incidents, root cause, current guidance and training material. It was found that behavioural related safety issues were a key driver behind the increase in manual handling incidents.

G+ are therefore developing a material handling safety toolkit for use in the global offshore wind industry - a Hearts and Minds type tool, used in the context of an interactive workshop to improve safety of material handling from a behavioural perspective for offshore wind farm workers. The focus of the work is for site level, workers in construction, operations and decommissioning activities. To find out more about the workstream or to be involved then please contact gplus@energyinst.org.