The project
Seagreen is Scotland’s largest offshore windfarm, located around 27km from the coast of Angus in the North Sea, with 114 turbines and a total generating capacity of 1,075MW. Seagreen is also the world’s deepest fixed bottom windfarm and was at the time the biggest construction project in Europe.
Our role
Seagreen was one of B&P first’s projects, initially instructed by SSE Renewables in 2018 to support development of a land assembly strategy and land budget. This evolved to B&P becoming the land assembly team and agricultural liaison throughout construction. Our role continues as we oversee the reinstatement and monitoring phase of the project.
The huge scale of this project, its important location within Scotland’s agricultural ‘Golden Mile’ and its timing overlapping with major changes including the COVID pandemic and Brexit, presented a range of challenges. All of which have been successfully navigated by our team.
We provided a comprehensive service including:
- Land Strategy
- Land budget and forecasting
- Site selection
- Landowner engagement and liaison
- Negotiation of land agreements
- Management of access for survey work
- Expert Witness service
- Agricultural Liaison throughout construction and reinstatement
Challenges
This area of Scotland is known for its high value crops such as potatoes and strawberries supplied to major clients and events including Wimbledon. At the point of our involvement the project had already been in discussion with landowners for several years however there were considerable reservations and the prospect of CPO being required to secure land rights. Our land team rebuilt relationships between the client and landowners to successfully secure all 40 landowner agreements within a pressurised 18-month timeframe, demonstrating our team’s excellent engagement skills.
The biggest challenge with this project, however, was the COVID-19 pandemic which meant construction had to be stood down for a period of time. As a project of national significance, construction was able to restart during lockdown with our Agricultural Liaison Team among the very limited number of people permitted to remain on site throughout, providing a presence to oversee compliance and maintain local relationships.
There was also a change of contractor during construction causing disruption and changes to how things were done, plus the added pressure of open soil exposed for cable construction which needed to be continued urgently. We had to reassemble a new construction team and get work back on track as quickly and smoothly as possible to prevent damage and considerable losses for the landowners.
Good relationships and understanding the needs of all involved are integral to every project but were absolutely crucial during this time on Seagreen. Our industry experience and ability to draw on the right people from our team to maintain strong relationships with the client, contractors and the community were critical to its success.
Additional challenges our land team had to navigate included a major golfing event at Carnoustie and associated media coverage, negotiating with global media outlets such as Sky Sports to allow coverage without impacting on construction. Our role also included liaising with the Ministry of Defence to close the UK’s longest rifle firing range for a week to facilitate construction.
Many of our team honed their engagement and negotiation skills through this project building long lasting relationships which continue today.
Highlights
This was the first offshore windfarm that B&P worked on from start to finish which we are incredibly proud of. Over the course of this project our business has grown from being a handful of people to a team of over 100. Many of whom have played a part in the Seagreen project.
Our Agricultural Liaison team built really strong relationships with the landowners and the clients which meant that instead of relationships breaking down in the face of all the challenges, they strengthened. This project also demonstrated how having the right people on board can make a huge difference to a project.
Working on site as part of a small team during lockdown created a sense of community. It was intense having to make sure we kept things going, having to do tests every day to prevent construction grinding to a half. We all came together working towards the same goal.
We also learned that the devil is in the detail and having everything accurately noted is critical if there are changes in contractors and pauses in construction.