As the east of England celebrates Wind Week, which runs until tomorrow (October 28), events linking businesses in the region to winners of the biggest contracts on Norfolk Boreas offshore wind farm will start early next year.
Since planning of the Norfolk Zone 47km off the Norfolk coast started nearly 10 years ago, Vattenfall has forged relationships with hundreds of East Anglian businesses and held events to discover the wealth of capabilities and innovations in the region.
Dr Catrin Ellis Jones, who heads up Vattenfall’s stakeholder and community engagement for offshore wind across Europe, said: “There are some incredible companies here. East Anglia is such an important exporter of skills and expertise across the global wind business.
“We are committed to helping to unleash the potential of UK companies and encourage participation in the renewables sector, boosting local employment. To do this, we need to work with local business organisations and larger contractors to support companies to gear up and prepare themselves for opportunities.
“A range of businesses – from engineering to drone experts, heavy plant suppliers to security companies, hedge cutters to hotels, vessel suppliers to taxi companies – are in the Norfolk Zone’s supply chain group for the projects, to generate enough green power for nearly four million UK homes and save about six million tonnes of carbon dioxide.”
Working with Norfolk Chambers of Commerce, Vattenfall will hold Meet the Buyer events early next year to introduce local companies to J. Murphy & Sons and Siemens Energy, contractors for engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the high-voltage direct current (HVDC) onshore substation and connection to the National Grid.
Murphy was awarded the £2.5m contract to deliver early works for the onshore cable installation, and is also the preferred bidder for onshore construction. It has pledged to work with local colleges to find young people to work with them, as well as local companies.
Denise Hone, Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone senior stakeholder and community liaison manager, said Norfolk Boreas and Norfolk Vanguard would have as big an East Anglian ‘stamp’ as possible.
“Vattenfall offers small-medium enterprises support and additional time to qualify and enter the sector, and next year will introduce them to potential partners, including Tier One companies.”
Work with the world-class supply chain in the east of England led to Vattenfall becoming a driving force behind East Wind, the cluster to showcase its expertise, skills and innovation.
Vattenfall’s early engagement has led businesses to innovate and improve new technologies and methodologies, which delivers better, more locally appropriate projects with greater local socio-economic impacts.
“The region is really vibrant,” said Caroline Olley, Norfolk Zone procurement manager. “An important part of our work is to build up small and medium-sized businesses as much as we can.
"There are a lot of former oil and gas companies that can transition into renewables. The time is now to reach out and link up.”
Local businesses working on the project include drone specialist HexCam, based at Felthorpe, which has won three contracts – two from Vattenfall for a 12-month cliff survey project at Happisburgh and a full fly-through of the 60km corridor, and one from J. Murphy & Sons for another full fly-through and a full LiDAR (light detection and ranging) topographic survey of the corridor.
Director Andy Bodycombe said: “This is the first time a developer has committed to us this early in a project. It is being true to its word not only to engage early with local companies but follow through and award contracts locally.”
Gibb Safety & Survival, with a base at Great Yarmouth, provides protective clothing, safety, and survival equipment to Vattenfall’s 11 UK wind farms, while unexploded ordnance expert Ordtek, based at Hethel, provided desk-based unexploded ordnance (UXO) risk management – specifically UXO risk assessment – and clearance of ground investigation operations for the Norfolk projects.
East Point Geo, based near Norwich, won a contract to create a 3D model using survey data collected across the vast site since 2010 and prepare a geotechnical interpretation report (GIR), bringing together laboratory and site investigation data with geotechnical engineering design to finalise how the Norfolk Zone substations will be built.
Miles Drainage (20), based at Bury St Edmunds, will design drainage for the cable corridor.
Look out for dates of future events at group.vattenfall.com/uk/what-we-do/our-projects/supply-chain
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