The Southern/ Polish Baltic offshore sector is envisaged to be a future growth region for wind energy development.

Vattenfall in particular, have been actively engaged and monitoring the potential of the region for some three years in readiness for the hoped-for Polish Governments anticipated leap of faith and backing into renewable energy and the significant benefits it will provide to the Polish economy and supply chain.

Whilst principle focus at this early stage will always be centred around planning, consent, development and installation, the continued maintenance of offshore subsea and topside assets to provide 25 year + shelf life longevity is often forgotten or dismissed until much later in the OWF thought process/ early life cycle.

As a proactive measure to guard against this and ensure this valuable knowledge base, focused around asset integrity monitoring, is brought to the fore within the Polish energy mindset and to provide a catalyst for in country sharing of skills and knowledge, MEWO S.A. (the largest independent marine survey/ geoscience/ environmental and subsea engineering company in Poland) approached their UK consultants Suffolk Survey & Subsea Services Ltd. (S⁴) to assist them with UK introductions and O&M support.

Vattenfall’s proactive and forward thinking vision (big picture) is therefore kindly providing a delegation from MEWO a full O&M study/ knowledge transfer opportunity during Renewable UK’s Global Offshore Wind Expo on 25^th/ 26^th June 2019 with a tour and extensive O&M round table discussion sessions at their Ramsgate Control Centre for their Thanet, Kentish Flats and Kentish Flats Extension OWF’s, including a visit to Whitstable harbour to view the CTV’s and other craft utilised for the marine assets O&M tasks. It is expected that this initial visit will be the pre cursor to further discussion sessions & sounding boards in the future between Vattenfall and MEWO/ the greater Polish based supply chain, both here in the UK and at the Swedish Embassy in Warsaw (whom are fully supportive of Vattenfall’s in country interests for regional development & local economic prosperity).

MEWO and S⁴ would like to extend a debt of gratitude in particular to Colin Brown (Senior Business Development Manager), Melanie Rogers (Communications Officer) and Rob Lilly (Procurement & Supply Chain Development/ Manager) of Vattenfall for making this first O&M study visit possible.

Vattenfall is a leading European energy company with approximately 20,000 employees. For more than 100 years we have electrified industries, supplied energy to people’s homes and modernised our way of living. We now want to make fossil-free living possible within one generation.

MEWO. S.A. are the largest privately owned and independent marine survey/ geoscience/ environmental and subsea engineering company in Poland providing services and solutions to the marine energy sectors in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Southern North Sea’s for oil & gas, renewables, subsea telecoms and research.

Suffolk Survey and Subsea Services (S⁴), is a private limited company, based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK, providing management consultancy services & solutions to the marine survey/ geoscience and offshore energy sectors.