SeaRoc, the company behind the SeaPlanner marine management software, said it is looking ahead to a much more active offshore wind market in the following three years, after a relatively slow 2015.
SeaRoc Group’s Managing Director Steve Pears said: “2015 has brought both challenges and opportunities in equal measure. It goes without saying that it has been a relatively low time for the offshore wind industry in terms of new wind farm construction, more so in the UK – however this hasn’t lessened our focus on continuing to invest in providing the best possible solutions for our clients.”
Pears pointed out that the development and support of the SeaPlanner software has been and remains the company’s primary objective. “Our significant investment has enabled a host of new functionality. Focusing on the security element for our clients has also been hugely important, and as such we are proud to be working with Rackspace and have recently undertaken a server migration to support these new enhancements.”
SeaPlanner has been awarded a number of new contracts throughout 2015, including those with Vattenfall, E.ON and Van Oord, and has extended its presence in Germany with the new client Nordsee One GmbH, as well as in the Netherlands with the Gemini project.
“O&M has also been a focus for us this year, encouraging our clients to continue to benefit from the system during this phase of their projects – as E.ON have recently done on the Humber Gateway wind farm,” Pears said.
Pears continued to say that working on the European projects has driven the company into new areas of technology, which enabled SeaRoc to deal with sites further offshore where no telecomms or line of sight radio signals can reach, by improving its capability in areas such as satellite communications, VHF over Internet Protocol and CCTV over Internet.
“As we leave 2015 behind, we are looking ahead to a much more active market in 2016/17/18, with a number of projects moving into construction in the UK and across Europe and more in the pipeline,” Pears said, and added: “As the market gains momentum, one of our key objectives is to assist our clients with their cost reduction strategies. We, like the majority of our clients, are committed to delivering higher quality products at a lower cost through time – ultimately contributing to the cost per MW reduction of offshore wind electricity production.”
He concluded that the company is looking to make movements into other sectors with the SeaPlanner in the year ahead and expand its portfolio in the dredging market.