Vattenfall safety director takes helm at offshore wind health and safety body
10/01/2022
Against a backdrop of expanding industry operations and a flourishing work programme, the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organisation (G+) has today announced Jakob Nielsen as its new Chair.
A G+ board member for several years, Jakob is currently Director of Health and Safety Offshore Wind at Vattenfall. In his role at Vattenfall, he is responsible for the safe operations at one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat.
Setup in partnership with the Energy Institute, G+ works internationally to tackle health and safety issues in the industry through four main work programmes: incident data reporting, good practice guidelines, safe by design and learning from incidents.
Commenting Jakob Nielsen said:
“G+ has a fantastic track record and has established itself as the leading authority for health and safety in the global offshore wind sector.
“I want to use my position as Chair not only to drive partner companies and industry stakeholders to better embed G+’s good practice work in their own operations, but to feed this through the industry supply chain to create better industry standards.
“This becomes even more important with the growth, expansion and internationalisation the industry is seeing.”
Nick Wayth CEng FEI, Chief Executive of the Energy Institute, home to the G+ secretariat, commented:
“G+ continues to demonstrate its global leadership by bringing industry together to deliver demonstrable change and help reduce injury frequency, as shown in their latest Incident Data report.
“With his vast industry experience, G+ can have no greater champion than Jakob in driving safe working practices.
“A huge thanks also go to outgoing Chair Tove Lunde who has so ably led G+’s expanding work programme over the past two years.”
G+ comprises of nine leading operators – EDF Renewables, Equinor, Ocean Winds, Ørsted, RWE, ScottishPower Renewables, Siemens Gamesa, SSE, Vattenfall – as well as many associate members.
With expanding operations in the Asia Pacific and North American regions, G+ is continuing to utilise the lessons learned from high potential incidents that occurred during the early stages of offshore wind in Europe to develop good practice guidelines, in multiple languages, to support safe offshore wind operations in these regions.
G+ member companies submit incident data on a quarterly basis, which are then anonymised for analysis by the Energy Institute. The publication of the incident data is a crucial step in ensuring information is provided transparently and openly, to benchmark and aid the overall offshore wind industry’s health and safety performance.
Other planned activities in G+’s work programme for 2022 include promoting lifting plan good practice, sharing knowledge within fabrication yards and producing videos on manual handling.
Notes for editors
- For media enquiries contact Neil Michie on 020 7467 7132 or nmichie@energyinst.org
- G+ is the global health and safety organisation for the offshore wind industry.
The Energy Institute provides the secretariat and supports the ongoing work of the G+.
We bring together business leaders, health and safety experts and organizations operating in the offshore wind industry to drive good practice and promote world-class safety performance across the sector.
Through an evidence-based approach, we ensure key emerging risks are mitigated through cooperation and shared learnings, aiming for the highest levels of health and safety standards being pursued throughout the life cycle of offshore wind farms.
We engage on important industry matters by facilitating discussion and bringing together industry stakeholders to speak with one voice for the offshore wind industry.