Wind Turbine Safety Rules. A study on rule violation in the offshore wind industry in the UK

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Engineering - Power Engineering, grade: 65, University of Lincoln, language: English, abstract: Safety is considered paramount in the offshore wind industry; however, individuals break the rules that were created and are implemented to protect them. The present study has four objectives: to find how the work environment affects the implementation of the Wind Turbine Safety Rules, to find deficiencies on the application of the Wind Safety Rules (WTSR), to study relations between technician¿s backgrounds and how they perceive the rules. Furthermore to probe to which extent the difference between customer staff, manufacturer staff and contractors may affect their attitude towards the rules.

To achieve this, sixty-one individuals from three different organisations, that are trained on or working under the WTSR were sent an online survey; of which thirty-five individuals completed the survey. The results indicate that work environment does severally affect the implementation of the rules and can be a catalyst for rule violation. Several shortcomings of the implementation of the WTSR identified, and that can be related to management responsibilities. There are some differences between manufacturer and customer staff views regarding safety. The analysis of relations between technician¿s backgrounds, roles, education or skillset demonstrated that even though technicians believe that the WTSR exist to protect them, they also believe they are used to protected companies from prosecution.

The same analysis indicates that the role does not influence the way technicians see the rules but affects the way others exert pressure on them, with Authorising Engineers (AE) followed by Authorised Technicians (AT) as feeling most pressured to break the rules. This study lays the foundation for further studies on this topic and provides recommendations to mitigate rule violations in the offshore wind industry.