6 Alpha Managing UXO Risk at Beatrice OWF

6 Alpha Associates informed today that it is currently carrying out a comprehensive unexploded ordnance (UXO) risk management for the Beatrice offshore wind farm, which will eventually result in issuing a final UXO safety clearance certificate. 

Upon completion, the work will confirm that the prospective threat to installation activity presented by UXO has been reduced to as low as is reasonably practicable (ALARP) – the legal and safety standard for munitions risk management.

6 Alpha delivered a desktop threat and risk assessment to assess the likely presence of UXO on the project site. Once the nature of the prospective UXO threat had been identified, the company worked to design a subsea survey in order to detect and define potential UXO.

Together with Fugro and Boskalis, 6 Alpha is now processing raw survey data in order to ensure that only the most likely ferrous anomalies that might be considered as targets of interest are investigated. The approach ensures that the likelihood of missing ‘false negatives’ is significantly reduced and that the number of ‘false positive’ targets can be concurrently reduced so that benign seabed detritus is not investigated.

Simon Cooke, 6 Alpha’s founder and Managing Director, said: “It is imperative that appropriate and reasonably practicable risk mitigation measures are not only put in place in line with reducing risks ALARP, but also with a strong focus on overall cost reduction for the industry. We aim to ensure that UXO risk management solutions are being implemented as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible, whilst affording project safety”.