The operations involved in the installation, commissioning and maintenance of offshore wind farms are complex in nature. Therefore, it should come of no surprise to note that the equipment required to carry out these campaigns need to be just as innovative. It is for this reason that off-the-shelf components simply do not deliver what operators are looking for: more often than not, developing bespoke one-off products is the only way to get the job done.
The Netherlands-based engineering and manufacturing company Draftec knows this only too well. “Clients do not come to us for a product that they can find in a catalogue. Quite the opposite, they come to us looking for flexibility in the design,” begins Robin de Vos , Draftec’s Lead Electrical and Software Engineer. “Furthermore, they want to be involved with the design process because they often have limited footprint available on board their vessels.”