Final Assembly Industrialization for Floating Foundations

Saipem developed an industrialization process to carry out the offshore wind foundations final assembly stage aiming to achieve a compact and efficient work site able to deliver the high throughput needed for floating wind farms at gigawatt scale. This final assembly industrialization process, called Smart Yard (patent pending), applies a production line philosophy where the work is split among optimized workstations minimizing the duration of the operations, the space required, and the number of resources necessary with a positive impact on the project economics and timeline. The Smart Yard production process approach it’s optimized for Saipem’s STAR1 semi-submersible design, and intended to be accommodated on a number of US ports (present and future) and it will contribute to the cost-efficiency necessary for floating wind to take off in US, while supporting the development of a American fabrication value-chain for floating wind. The Saipem’s STAR1 final assembly process has been split up in an exhaustive sequence of elementary tasks. Those tasks and the different tools and techniques available on the market to perform them have been analyzed to select the most appropriate ones and define the duration and methodologies applicable to each task. The Smart Yard assembly process applied for STAR1 has resulted in the definition of typically 3- 4 workstations. A customized equipment shall handle parts alignment in combination with a real time laser alignment method ensuring a perfect fit. Dedicated access and fabrication towers fitted with the selected welding technologies and real time NDE shall minimize the joining time eliminating reworks. The handling philosophy rely on the use of SPMTs/skidding which results in a great flexibility and operations easiness. The area required is minimized, and with no need for oversized cranes deployment, the facility can be installed on a temporary basis and easily relocated. Additionally, the technology content and tasks specialization allow for fast workforce training. This type of production philosophy opens the path for a serial and mass production plant development tailored on the floating foundation product category.