- Published: May 2026
- REF/ISBN: 9781787255302
- Edition: 1st
Overview:
This good practice guideline (GPG) aims to advance, share and encourage good practice for the management of safety risks associated with moving, installed wind turbine generator (WTG) blades striking a vessel.
It is intended for all parties involved in the management of vessel/WTG operations. Primarily, these will be client organisations (wind farm owners, operators and developers), as well as their high-level contractors such as vessel operators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). All such organisations are collectively referred to as ‘offshore wind companies’ (OWCs) in this document.
The GPG is a resource for OWCs to adopt and implement within their own safety management systems. It could be used to, for example:
- provide a baseline from which to establish common ground between project parties, helping to ensure consistent expectations and compatible approaches;
- incorporate into company standards, procedures and practices;
- incorporate into contract specifications, and
- provide prompts for use in gap analyses, audits and reviews.
Scope
The focus and emphasis of this GPG is on moving, installed WTG blades striking a vessel. The situations considered are those in which hub rotation or nacelle yaw bring a blade into contact with a vessel, posing safety risks to personnel on the vessel, the WTG or the transfer system.
This GPG does not cover vessels colliding with static blades or with other parts of a WTG.
Most of the guidelines relate to safety by design aspects, i.e. ensuring safety in the specification and design or selection of system elements. There are also guidelines relating to on-site or ‘on-the-day’ safety, i.e. implementing the safety arrangements as designed and refining, updating or expanding on them to allow for factors that could not be fully considered in the safety by design process.
Key messages
Overarching good practice points are:
- the importance of following safety by design principles;
- ensuring that there are clear and robust procedures for vessel approach and WTG control, including what communications are required at each step, for all foreseeable situations;
- ensuring clarity about who is responsible for what, especially regarding WTG control and who has primacy of control at each stage of the process, and
- ensuring that the parties involved understand the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of the design and safety arrangements.
The guidance is designed to be used in conjunction with the EI 3617-1 Vessel blade self assessment tool which can be accessed via the 'supplementary material' button.