
ForeCoast® Marine
Design desk
Strategic planning software
Plan and optimise your offshore wind project in a safe, virtual environment. Design desk allows you to test and optimise designs and strategies throughout the lifetime of your offshore wind farm.
Simulate complex offshore wind projects
The Design desk simulates complex offshore wind projects, in a virtual world, representing all of the phases and operations.
Through these simulations, the performance of proposed designs and operational strategies can be compared quickly and reliably.
Key performance metrics:
- CAPEX and OPEX
- Programme
- Weather/technical/logistical downtime
- Carbon emissions

Test and optimise construction and O&M strategies
The system can then be used to test different strategies and how they will influence performance, for example, by making changes to:
- Field location and layout
- Vessel type and quantity
- Seasonal working windows
- Port locations
- Turbine types (e.g. fixed or floating).
This allows for multiple, alternative strategies to be tested – quickly and reliably – before committing resources and avoiding the risk and cost of later changes being made.

Offshore Wind Country Insights
ForeCoast Marine's Design Desk software has been used to provide insight into the expected durations and vessel costs associated with the installation of offshore wind farms, at various sites across the globe.
For each location, the same two vessel strategies were compared: The first was based on the use of two Jack up Barges (JUB), with a day rate of $180,000 / day and an operating threshold of 2.5 m significant wave height. The second was based on the use of 2 Heavy Lift Vessels (HLV) supplied by 4 feeder barges, with a day rate of $130,000 / day and an operating threshold of 1.6m significant wave height. The key findings from these analyses are presented in the Insight documents below.