How we can help
Empire provides five core services: Project delivery, concept design, specialist engineering, emergency response service and engineering services for floating wind.
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Project Delivery
Sometimes, an engineering project needs a little extra horsepower. We can deploy one of our world class engineers quickly, reliably and safely, wherever help is needed.
- Owner’s Engineer
- Foundations Package management
- Foundations Engineering management
- Foundations Lead engineers
- Tender preparation, evaluation and negotiation of Detailed Design and EPCI contracts
- Concept development
- Certification support, including definition of certifier’s scope and management of certification process
- Independent design reviews
- Value Engineering
- Preparation and review of Design Basis document
- Planning and scoping of offshore geotechnical site investigation and onshore laboratory testing campaigns
- Load Iteration management – we also offer a 1-day training package covering this highly specialist topic
Concept Design
- Concept evaluation and selection
- Front End Engineering Design (FEED)
- Concept design for early stage project planning and budgeting
- Competitive Tender design for Contractors
- Fatigue, Ultimate, Accidental and Serviceability limit state analysis
- Design Basis and Design Brief preparation
- Screening of geotechnical conditions
- Geotechnical assessment including evaluation of foundation installation methods
Specialist Engineering
- Linear and Non-Linear Finite Element Analysis including: bolted and grouted connections, boat landings, ship impact, pile toe buckling, pile driving damage and stress concentration factors
- Design of monopile, jacket and gravity base foundations at concept, tender and detailed phases
- Design Basis and Design Brief preparation and review
- Bolted and grouted connection design
- Failure analysis, including repair, root-cause and forensic investigation
- Independent design review and assessment
- Value Engineering
- Metocean analysis
- Hydrodynamic loading
- Corrosion protection review
- Lifting and transportation analysis
- Lifetime extension analysis
- Geotechnical analysis
- Pile installation evaluation and marine works support, including back-analysis of pile driving records
Emergency Response Service (ERS)
Emergency incidents can involve risks to the integrity of the foundation structure and turbine. This may lead to significant business interruption
By registering your offshore wind assets with Empire’s Emergency Response Service, you can access foundation specialists within the first few hours of an incident.
- 24/7 Engineering support
- Access to structural models and data
- Nominated contact point(s) including out of hours
- Back up core asset data to mitigate against severe
loss at a crucial moment
Floating Wind
Empire offer a broad range of engineering services for floating wind including independent technical advisory, engineering management, structural and mooring design and advanced analyses.
Early-stage floating wind project planning and budgeting
- Early-stage floating wind project planning and budgeting
- Floating wind concept/prototype selection and development
- Technical evaluation considering the whole lifecycle of floating wind assets, covering design, fabrication, installation, O&M, and decommissioning aspects
- Floating Wind Design Basis and Design Brief
- Floating offshore wind structural integrity management (FOWSIM) system development
- Floating structural stability analysis
- Coupled analysis – considering coupling effects between aerodynamic, hydrodynamic and structural response for strength and fatigue
- Mooring and anchoring system design and analysis
Tools we use
Empire only uses the industry-leading products to perform our work. We keep in-house a specialist suite of software, which allows us to perform a wide range of assessments and analyses. This includes Fathom, our custom designed tool for assessing hydrodynamic loading on structures.
If you have unique technical requirements, our engineers will be happy to adapt.
Foundations Concept and Tender Design
FATHOM is an in-house code we’ve written for assessing hydrodynamic loading on structures, and performing ULS and FLS strength checks. We’ve coded it ourselves so it’s hugely flexible and fully customisable for our Clients needs.
Finite Element Analysis
When problems exceed the capabilities of hand calculations, or a higher level of accuracy is required, we use the ANSYS suite of analysis tools. We have the capability and experience to perform complicated non-linear static and transient analyses.
Offshore Operations Analysis
When more complex hydrodynamic modelling is required, or when structural engineering is strongly coupled with naval architecture, a comprehensive tool is what you need. OrcaFlex is our go-to software in the analysis of offshore operations, floating structures, mooring lines and submarine cables. We also use it for Wind Turbine simulations in Integrated Loads Assessment processes.
Computer Aided Design
For 3D modeling of components and assemblies as well as engineering drawing production we maintain licenses of Solidworks, Inventor and AutoCAD. We like to think there isn’t much we can’t design with these tools, but if you prefer a different flavour of CAD, our designers are only too happy to switch their hand to CATIA, Pro/E or even Google Sketchup.
Numerical Analysis
For detailed numerical analysis, post processing of turbine loads data and reviewing accelerometer or strain gauge data we are big fans of Matlab.
Project Management
There are many tools available to assist with Project Management. Our package of choice is MS Project as its great for maintaining a good overview of a project.
