Hornsea Offshore Wind Farm Projects

GoBe Consultants have been providing strategic, technical and management support on the Hornsea Projects since April 2013 and are the only EIA consultants to be actively engaged in all four of the former Hornsea Zone Projects.

GoBe were first contracted on Hornsea Projects One and Two during the pre-application stage to provide a range of key services to SMartWind (previous owners of the Projects) and then subsequently Orsted and this role has continued on both projects through their consent determination and into the post consent compliance phase.  Specific services provided on these projects are briefly summarised below:

Pre-application phase

  • Technical review and audit of the draft Environmental Statement (ES) and draft HRA;
  • Provision of strategic and technical advice on issues such as marine processes, offshore ornithology, benthic ecology, fish ecology, fisheries, marine mammals and intertidal and coastal ecology, along with interaction with other users (such as oil and gas developers, search and rescue operations, and marine vessels);
  • Technical and strategic review of all final application material;
  • Project Development support (secondment to the project team) including the management of certain offshore work streams;
  • Production of and or input into various supporting documents including the consultation report and the Water Framework Directive assessment, as well as reviewing and input into other accompanying application documents such as the HRA report, the DCO and dMLs;
  • Stakeholder engagement support.

Examination phase

  • Provision of examination support and development of an examination strategy including acting as the examination co-ordinator and also offshore lead directly for the client;
  • Provision of examination planning, co-ordinating all examination activities (internal and external) and responses. This role also required both strategic and technical input into all written submissions and stakeholder negotiations held during the examination;
  • Provision of management of activities associated number of technical topics, including benthic ecology, marine mammals, fish and shellfish ecology, commercial fisheries, physical processes, and liaison with key stakeholders and regulators;
  • Stakeholder engagement and drafting of the Statements of Common Ground
  • Technical authorship of written responses;
  • Expert witness on key topics (e.g. marine mammals);
  • Technical and strategic review of all examination material.

Post consent compliance

  • Preparation, consultation and submission of all pre-commencement returns associated with the transmission and generation asset dMLs . This includes documents such as the MMMP, the pre, during and post construction monitoring plans and construction method statements;
  • Application for non-material change to the DCO and provision of supporting environmental information for increase in operational capacity, hammer energy increase, topside infrastructure dimensions of the OSS platforms and amendment to cable installation techniques;
  • Shadow HRA for the southern North Sea Site of Community Importance (SNS SCI) to define the potential for adverse effect on the sites designated feature (harbour porpoise) from the construction activities, both alone and in-combination;
  • Responsible for applying for new marine licences associated with the project for trial trenching, boulder clearance and UXO detonation operations. The latter required a bespoke MMMP and European Protected Species (EPS) licence and linkages to the shadow HRA for the SNS SCI that GoBe also developed.

GoBe have been appointed to support Hornsea Project Three through the pre-application and examination phases of the development.  During the pre-application phase GoBe undertook a technical and strategic review of all application documents prior to their submission and provided the Project with strategic development support to help reduce the consent risk for key topics.   GoBe, in partnership with SMRU Consulting Ltd are the lead author for the marine mammal assessment work.  During the examination phase GoBe are providing technical and strategic development support across all offshore matters and are technical lead (with SMRU) for all matters associated with marine mammals.

GoBe were appointed as lead offshore EIA consultant for Hornsea Project Four in 2018.  GoBe are responsible for the delivery of all offshore related work associated with site selection, scoping, section 42 (preliminary environmental information) consultation and final application.  GoBe will be responsible for the HRA and management of the associated Evidence Plan process.  This contract will comprise the deployment of a dedicated technical and project management team to Orsted over a number of years.

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