Posters

Abstract

SCADA-driven optimisation and predictive maintenance depend on high-quality, high-resolution operational data. Yet offshore wind portfolios frequently exhibit “analytics-ready” data scarcity, limited sensor coverage, inconsistent instrumentation across balance-of-plant systems, and commissioning datasets that are insufficient to explain early-life reliability events. This paper argues that a primary root cause is not digital immaturity alone, but construction delivery economics and risks. Offshore contractors execute a material portion of project scope and face strong cost and schedule pressure, leading to minimal incremental instrumentation unless it is contractually required and operationally justified. Using a construction-to-operations lens, we show why contractor decisions are pivotal. Offshore contractors are responsible for nearly half of offshore wind CAPEX execution (foundations, offshore substation, and transport & installation campaigns), making their procurement and installation choices determinative for what monitoring hardware is actually installed and what data streams are available post-COD. In parallel, project delivery is constrained by scarce installation enablers such as specialised heavy-lift and installation vessels booked years in advance. Schedule slippage can cascade via weather windows and vessel backlogs. Under these conditions, “optional” sensors are frequently deprioritised, they add integration and testing tasks, can complicate certification/acceptance, and create perceived schedule risk without immediate benefit to the contractor. We propose a life-cycle framework that links (i) contractor execution risk, (ii) instrumentation scope decisions, and (iii) the resulting limits on SCADA-based failure prediction.  Instrumentation Minimum Viable Dataset (IMVD) for offshore wind assets, covering selected structural, and balance-of-plant monitoring explicitly positioned as a bankability requirement for reliable predictive maintenance and life-extension decisions. untangling some of the procurement, installation, connectivity and risk of damage during the offshore campaign of the equipment. The output is a practical contracting-and-operations playbook: specify IMVD deliverables in EPCI terms, tie acceptance to data availability/quality, and prioritise instrumentation that reduces uncertainty in high-consequence offshore interventions. The intent is to improve early-life reliability outcomes, mitigate failure risk, and defend lifetime energy delivery where data scarcity currently limits SCADA-driven optimisation