AIS Prepping Deep Ocean Crew for Offshore Wind Work

AIS Training has secured a contract with offshore cable installation contractor, DeepOcean, to upskill its workers as the company prepares to deliver several new offshore wind contracts.

The scope of the contract will see AIS train up to 100 of DeepOcean’s workers in mandatory global wind qualifications at its industrial training village in North Shields, which includes a Renewable Energy Training Centre of Excellence.

“After winning several large offshore wind projects for the transporting, installation and trenching of inter-array and export cables, we had a requirement to train a substantial number of staff quickly in Global Wind Organisation (GWO) standards,” Anna Greenstreet, senior offshore crewing coordinator at DeepOcean, said.

“The wind industry in the UK is still relatively young and mandatory training requirements are constantly evolving. Some of our new contracts needed staff to be trained to GWO standards in skills such as working at height, sea survival, firefighting, first aid and manual handling. We chose AIS Training as our preferred supplier as the company has invested heavily over the past few years and offers outstanding facilities and expert instructors.”

DeepOcean recently completed cable route clearance works prior to export cable landfall pull-in operations for DONG Energy’s 660MW Walney Extension offshore wind farm. The company’s scope of works includes route engineering as well as the installation and trenching of a total of 136km offshore export cables and a 23km interlink cable. DeepOcean will use the recently delivered Maersk Connector to install subsea cables at the site.

At the end of November 2016, DeepOcean won a contract to transport and install inter-array cables for DONG Energy’s 1.2GW Hornsea Project One wind farm.

The company has also recently won a contract to transport and install export cables for the 714MW East Anglia One wind farm.