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The safe transfer of personnel to offshore wind structures in order to carry out maintenance activities remains a critical operation, especially in regions with severe environmental conditions, such as the Southern North Sea. Several methods exist for accessing OWTs; gangway-based Walk-to-Work (W2W) systems are widely used. However, crew transfer operations pose various challenges and severe risks to personnel safety and equipment. This paper presents a qualitative risk analysis to identify, evaluate, and mitigate hazards associated with W2W gangway-based personnel transfer operations by using a well-structured risk assessment methodology. In this study, two systematic approaches were used for hazard identification (HAZID). The first involves a detailed review of meeting notes from discussions with industrial experts from different offshore sectors. The second consists of an in-person HAZID session conducted with a group of professional engineers. Through these methods, a total of 78 hazards were identified and classified into different categories, i.e., human factors, environmental factors, design & engineering, operations, and health, safety & emergency preparedness. Several high and critical risks that require urgent mitigation strategies, including the emergency retraction of gangways and the failure to recover technicians from OWTs during adverse weather conditions, have been identified.
| Topic Area | Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics |
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