Safety Offshore

Global offshore wind is expected to achieve a staggering 13% average annual growth from 2020 to 2050. In the UK, construction of the world’s largest wind farm, Dogger Bank, is currently underway off the North East coast of England, which will be capable of powering up to 6 million homes alone.

Offshore organisations are being relied upon to meet this increased demand in order to deliver climate goals and bolster energy security in an unstable global market. For the industry to operate at this heightened capacity, it also needs to be staffed effectively. Organisations will need to protect the safety of their workers in these remote and hazardous environments to ensure an efficient workforce to achieve this super-charged growth.

Access to qualified and robust medical services is crucial to ensuring the health, safety, and wellbeing of the workforce, and therefore, successful expansion of the industry to meet ever-increasing demand. Badly managed health and safety incidents have the potential to cause significant operational delays to offshore wind farms and supporting vessels. The nature of offshore wind farms means they face a unique set of health and safety challenges including distance from definitive care, environmental extremes, and limited resources.

This is where the support of companies, such as RMI, becomes invaluable. As a global health and safety organisation, RMI has extensive experience providing medical and safety solutions to offshore wind farms over the last 20 years, supplying topside and on-board medical and health and safety executive (HSE) services to the vessels supporting offshore wind projects around the world.

Meeting shifting demands

From the initial construction phase of projects such as the Dogger Bank wind farm, trained medical professionals must be deployed on service operation and jack-up vessels. For example, RMI, which is currently supporting the lives of the construction workers at Dogger Bank, provides 24/7 topside medical support, medical assistance services, and use of HSE offshore qualified medics to the offshore construction site, offering a high level of medical support and trust to the onsite workers.

Once an offshore wind farm moves into the operations and maintenance phase, there is a shift in the health and safety requirements of the site. Offshore workers will then require a long-term medical support team that works alongside them to deliver professional-level care to maintain day-to-day health as well as respond to emergencies.

Preparation and prevention

Even with the best preventative measures in place, illness and injury are inevitable in offshore environments, and so being prepared for medical emergencies is essential to avoid costly delays. The three main recommendations to avoid such issues are medical screenings, preparing onsite medical support and a Medical Emergency Response Plan (MERP).

One preventative measure that companies can take is ensuring that all workers are medically screened prior to working offshore. RMI is an experienced provider of Offshore Energies United Kingdom (OEUK) medicals, the industry-standard medical for workers in offshore environments. These are designed to identify major risk factors in individuals that would make it unsafe for them to work offshore, which can highlight serious medical conditions that would otherwise go unreported.

RMI also ensures its offshore medics have the necessary equipment and systems in place to maintain each crew vessel and provide the highest quality of support, all in one place. Offshore medical providers also play a vital role in providing education and encouragement for the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits among workers, to reduce the risk of injuries and illness. They also support with project management, clinical governance to ensure the delivery of quality care, and topside and medical diving support, which provides around-the-clock access to medical consultations. This type of support also limits the number of cases that require referral for further offsite medical care, saving time and resources, and reducing personnel downtime.

Planning for medical emergencies

At certain points, medical evacuation is a necessary response. Having a MERP, which includes lists of local medical facilities, communication plans in the case of an emergency, and resources for medical evacuation, helps organisations to smoothly facilitate this – saving both time and avoiding any further illness or loss of life.

Drawing up a plan may seem simple; however, it can be easy for organisations to make broad assumptions about imaginary situations. The best plans need to anticipate the worst-case scenario and consider the following elements: what happens if the helicopter is not available or cannot come for several hours and a worker needs to be evacuated by boat? What is the process for evacuating the worker by boat and getting them to shore? Who is trained to safely lower the worker from the turbine while administering first aid? Is the first aider able keep the patient alive for several hours? Is a working automated external defibrillator available?

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