The G+ work programme is agreed and steered through quarterly Board and monthly Focal Group meetings. The collation of incident data provides an evidence basis for influencing the content of the work programme.
The G+ has created a series of brochures to explain our work further. The “right stuff” brochure documents the overall work programme of the G+. The “right data” explains the incident reporting procedure. The “right guidance” details the good practice documents that the G+ creates. The “right design” contains information on the G+ Safe by Design workshops.
Outputs
Health and safety statistics
The annual health and safety incident report is available here, as well as the ability to interrogate the G+ data through Power BI.
Good practice guidelines
Good Practice Guidelines are a core part of the G+ work programme and can be found here.
Safe by Design workshops
The G+ regularly holds Safe by Design workshops. Further information on the initiative, including previous workshop reports can be found here.
Learning from incidents
Toolbox is a free to use web app which holds incident lessons and safety information shared by global energy companies for you to use at work every day, helping you and your team to get home safe.
Active workstreams
Physical requirements for technicians
This workstream aims to develop assessments of physical fitness standards by examining the physical requirements of offshore wind farm technicians.
Health and well-being in offshore wind
In this workstream G+ leads a project that assesses the occupational stress risk in the offshore wind industry.
Improving safety of CTV operations
This workstream looks at measures to reduce the number of incidents on CTVs.
Floating offshore wind
This workstream aims to identify health and safety risks in relation to floating offshore wind and produce industry guidance.
Onshore civils work in construction
In this workstream, SafetyOn and G+ are collaborating to address the risks associated with onshore civil construction works in the wind industry.
Improving safety of steel fabrication
In this workstream, G+ investigates how the steel industry can be further integrated into the safety culture of G+ members.
Offshore Wind Emergency Planning Exercise
In this workstream, G+ supports HM Coastguard in the UK to hold a multi-agency emergency planning exercise to take place in May 2022.
Manual handing - video campaign
This G+ workstream aims to develop a video campaign directed at offshore wind technicians that highlights the risks of manual handling and demonstrates best operating procedures for manual handling tasks.
Lifting - Case studies on routine low complexity lifts
This G+ workstream on lifting aims to produce a set of case studies on different types of lifts.
CTV vessel vetting standards
This workstream aims to harmonise requirements and investigate the vessel vetting regime.
Electrical safety
In this workstream, G+ aims to develop an arc flash labelling framework to be employed by developers, OEMs, owners, and national safety authorities.
Personnel transfer
This workstream aims to ascertain the most suitable forms of personnel transfer for different types of projects.
Lifesaving rules for offshore wind
In this workstream G+ is developing a common set of Lifesaving Rules for the offshore wind industry.
Research
The G+ has worked with several universities on offshore wind health and safety.
The University of Portsmouth was contracted to provide a detailed ergonomics assessment, identifying the key risks to technicians (short- and long-term), associated with ladder climbing in the offshore wind industry.
The report provides the outcomes from a review and analysis of existing literature on ladder climbing and the effects of this activity on the human body (short- and long-term) as well as the review of existing design and operational standards for ladders used in the offshore wind industry. It identifies the key risks to technicians (long term and short term) and includes the results from an ergonomic assessment of ladder climbing and provides recommendations. The report also provides recommendations for future work and research.
The G+ assisted a group of REMS students on the topic of human free lifting. Renewable Energy Marine Structures (REMS) is an EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT). It is a collaboration between Cranfield, Oxford and Strathclyde Universities.
The aim of the work was to conduct research into and assess the feasibility of methods and technologies that could reduce the need for personnel in the vicinity of lifting operations during installation of offshore wind turbines. They employed a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis method combined with a review of existing technological solutions and recommendations for new ones, and a cross industry survey, which allowed the capturing of real information of the views of operators and practitioners with respect to the criteria importance when it comes to the benchmarking of concepts. The paper was awarded best paper at WindEurope2018.
One of the G+ members, Ørsted, has employed an industrial PhD student to investigate the physical requirements in offshore wind. Part 1 is to undertake a survey to investigate associations between self-reported physical exposure, musculoskeletal complaints and physical fitness among technicians in Ørsted. Part 2 is to measure the physical capacity of technicians with a health check including VO2 max and muscle strength of the shoulder, neck, lower back and forearm and to observe the physical exposure of with accelerometery and heartrate monitoring. Part 3 is to design and test the feasibility of a 12-week on-site training, aimed at improving physical capacity. The results are due to be made available at the end of 2020.
Offshore wind transfer procedure
Early in 2015 the UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE) wrote to offshore wind industry stakeholders clarifying their position on the transfer of personnel from crew transfer vessels to offshore fixed assets in wind farms, with regards to the UK Work at Height Regulations 2005. The HSE’s expectation to achieve legal compliance is that a person is attached to a suitable fall arrest system prior to transferring on to the ladder and will when descending remain attached until transferred back onto the vessel.
The G+ Global Offshore Wind Health & Safety Organisation (G+) responded to this letter stating support for this method of transferring personnel, and where member sites are not currently adopting this approach that they would work collectively to support a transition to this arrangement and will also notify the wider industry of this intention.
In 2018, the G+ has reviewed the response previously provided on transfer procedures. The G+, or G9 as it was formerly known, historically focussed on the UK and Northern Europe, hence the reference in the letter. The G+ now has a strong drive to be global and would like to make clear that the procedures apply at all member sites across the globe.
Following consultation responses received during the review of the G+ Working at Height good practice document it is also worth clarifying that ensuring permanent attachment to the fall arrest system during transfer operations applies for all transfers i.e. from a floating vessel to a fixed structure and the other way around.