Prozess-FMEA: Präventive Risikomaßnahmen für Offshore-Windparkprojekte

Several project developers have already gained extensive experience with the installation of offshore wind farms and have been faced with a significant amount of major failures in various contract packages. One lesson learned by the project companies is to go for a higher vertical integration of risk tracing. Even if certain risks are contractually shifted onto contractors, liability limitations usually do not allow the full recovery of heavy losses. Moreover, a simple contractual transfer of risks sometimes makes it even harder to intervene, if necessary.

Even first-hand experience with recent failures does not necessarily mean having suitable prevention measures for future incidents in place. Moreover, the next project would most probably employ different contractors and feature new technologies. Even the company's project team might have changed.

Therefore, a systematic and sustainable approach to identify and deal with risks is essential for a company's learning curve and also increases the confidence of the stakeholders in an improved control of project risks.

Such a systematic approach is provided by the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method. The method was developed by NASA during the Apollo-Project [1]. Other sources trace its origins to the US Armed Forces [2]. Nowadays, several FMEA types are well established within the aviation, automotive, and other industries.

Experience demonstrates that initial project planning consists of hundreds of processes which subsequently diversify into thousands of sub-processes. As a consequence, a macro-based spreadsheet application has been developed (FMEA-tool) to guide the FMEA team through a structured process in order to deal with such a large quantity of data.