Canadian energy company Northland Power is planning to expand its operations and construction capabilities in Hamburg for the offshore wind sector.
Chief executive Mike Crawley told investors that the growing importance of offshore wind to the company’s portfolio meant that it is “moving operational responsibility and resources for our German projects inhouse”.
Northland’s operations centre in Hamburg oversees the construction of the 269MW Deutsche Bucht wind farm and monitors operations at the 332MW Nordsee One wind farm, both in the German North Sea.
Northland executive Morten Melin said having the same team involved in both projects leads to lessons learned from operations translated into construction and vice versa.
The developer is set to “retain more competences inhouse ranging from engineering, project management to long-term operations”, Melin said.
This will enable Northland to more effectively front-load the design and engineering activities to maximise the value of our project design and operation readiness, he added.
Melin further announced a new approach to contracting strategies to better manage and mitigate risks.
“This provides the opportunity to split contracts further, take more control and manage more interfaces and thereby managing more of the risks on our own, providing opportunities to increase direct control of the progress of projects, and also retaining part of the risk contingency otherwise paid to the contractors,” he said.
The new approach will be evaluated on a project to project level, Melin added.