What makes CrossWind stand out in your opinion?
“What really sets CrossWind apart, I believe, is its capability to connect all the partners and stakeholders to realise one big, dedicated and efficient team. We use a buddy system to maintain short direct communication lines in cross-company collaborations. That means that an electrical engineer from Siemens Gamesa can contact her/his counterpart at CrossWind to directly share thoughts. That makes us really flexible and fast as a project, especially from the moment that we received the irrevocable permit. We caught up with our original schedule despite an initial delay.”
What do you like most about your job?
“It’s an incredible puzzle. Connecting not only the technical dots, but also connecting all the stakeholders and involved people. The entire team are aligned to realise cross-company win-win-win situations and creating an optimal design over the full life cycle of the project. That’s what makes me tick.”
What do you consider to be the milestones from 2021?
“We’ve created a One Team culture with our stakeholders despite challenging (COVID) working environment, completed the certification for the turbine (Rotor Nacelle Assembly) the tower and foundations and are geared up to start fabrication. Another important thing that we, as a team, have achieved, is that we managed to stay on schedule in the preparation phase, even though the receipt of the irrevocable permit was delayed. It was the result of really good cooperation with Van Oord and Siemens Gamesa, amongst others. Van Oord and Fugro have completed their first UXO surveys successfully. Another important thing is that we’ve chosen Eemshaven as the wind turbine marshalling harbour.”
Which is your favourite innovation from our main five innovations?
“I definitely choose the offshore production of hydrogen as this enables a next step in further developing the value chain of offshore renewable energy (although I’m not an expert on this subject, that would be my colleague Maria Kalogera). I think that the results of our tests can not only help us, but the entire offshore wind industry to store renewable energy and deliver a more reliable and constant output of power to the grid throughout the year. That is our motto: we deliver, we innovate and we share.”
We look ahead to the coming year… What will be happening in 2022?
“Well… 2021 is characterised by finding all the right partners and designing the project and finding all the right partners. In 2022 we are entering the fabrication and construction phase of the project. TKF will start with the cable manufacturing soon. The monopile fabrication at SIF is also setting off. And Siemens Gamesa is starting up blade, nacelle and tower fabrication. We are now going from paper to reality so I’m really excited and looking forward to this new phase!”
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