One of the biggest frustrations for Paul Doherty, chief commercial and growth officer at Venterra, is the gap between ambition and reality in offshore wind.

“Collectively, there is a huge ambition to deliver. Everyone stands together and says: ‘We are going to make this happen.’

“In reality, when you get into the project, there are short-term and longer-term showstoppers that make things stagnant; it could be environmental consent or a number of other factors. It takes longer than it should take, there is no joined-up thinking and things drift. We can move faster than this.”

Paul Doherty, chief commercial and growth officer at Venterra (Image: Venterra) Timeline slippages risk problems across the entire industry.

“The supply chain has been good at resolving bottlenecks,” Paul added. “We have built new vessels and filled gaps in resources.”

But, with a serious shortage of connections as a major challenge, delayed projects “potentially puts people into the situation where they can’t develop”.

With a 20-year vision to grow its 10 companies and 700-strong workforce serving the engineering, build and support phases of new offshore wind farms, this presents obstacles. Acquisition of more companies and pushing into the operations and maintenance space is the plan.

“I would like to see Venterra become a well-known industry name where services and delivery are streamlined with all the capabilities; growing and evolving to take on bigger packages of work, smoothing out interfaces between developers and the supply chain to work and deliver projects more efficiently,” Paul said.

He points to fragmentation across the market and the need to de-risk projects as key issues.

“Offshore wind has grown from a space where it was very much a cottage industry. It had a lot of capabilities and expertise but in small boutique companies. As the industry has scaled, it can’t be done with small companies. There is a need to de-fragment the supply chain by bringing them together and removing all the interfaces.

“The second part is de-risking projects. The standard model would have a supplier with a design capability that would start on the initial aspects of the project. They are likely to be a consultancy firm. Once the build commences, it evolves into a construction business.

“It is hard talking to different players. What we are talking about is using the knowledge from the construction companies and sharing it collaboratively with the design process.

“If we manage the interface parties and reduce risk on different sites, we should be able to positively influence project timelines. We would like to be in a position in 10 years where people recognise that if you get Venterra engaged on a project, we can shorten the project........

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