PANEL 2

Risk, Regulation, and Insurance of Floating Infrastructure

Floating infrastructure is at risk to multiple sources of physical damage and business interruption that can occur during construction, installation and operational conditions. These factors contribute significantly to the cost of energy. Insurance, regulation and surveying play a critical role in understanding and mitigating these risks, especially for new floating technology. This panel will discuss these issues from the perspectives of insurance, marine warranty surveying, regulation, monitoring, and risk analysis.

Moderator: Andrew Myers (Northeastern University)

Prof. Andrew T Myers, PhD, PE is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University and a registered professional engineer in the state of California. Prior to joining Northeastern, Andrew worked for two years at AIR Worldwide in San Francisco, where he consulted on site-specific natural catastrophe risk assessments. He received his M.S. (2006) and Ph.D. (2009) at Stanford University and his B.S. (2004) from Johns Hopkins University; all three degrees are in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a focus on Structural Engineering. He was awarded the 2016 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for his work on offshore hazard modeling. His research interests include wind energy structures, multi-scale experimental testing of structures, computational mechanics-based simulation, and probabilistic modeling of structural and natural systems.

Panelist #1: Faris Nimri (Swiss Re)

Faris Nimri is a Senior Engineering Underwriter with Swiss Re, specializing in Offshore Wind and Innovative Renewable Technologies worldwide. He is part of Swiss Re’s Center of Competence for Offshore Technologies and an expert in Prototypical Renewable Technologies. Faris is the lead underwriter for the Block Island Wind Farm (the first Offshore Wind Farm in the United States), as well as for various offshore construction projects in the EU.
Before joining Swiss Re, Faris was a Project Engineering Manager on varies projects in the Heavy Construction Industries (including Power Generation, Mining and Oil & Gas) in Saudi Arabia and Australia. Faris holds a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering as well as Master’s in Engineering Management (MEM) and an MBA from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Panelist #2: Lars Samuelsson (ABS)

Lars Samuelsson, Manager, ABS Global Offshore Department in Houston, has been with ABS for more than two decades, having served in positions at both ABS and its wholly owned subsidiary, ABS Group, including management roles in ABS Offshore Engineering Department and in the ABSC Energy Development group. He has been involved in classification services for offshore units and certified verification agent (CVA) reviews for the majority of the floating production platforms and deep water ports installed in US waters since 1997.  Lars has also worked on several certification and classification projects of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations. Lars is the co-convener of IEC/TC88/PT61400-3-2, the working group tasked with developing a technical specification for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines as well as the convener of the AWEA Floating Wind Systems Guideline Working Group.  He has an MS in Naval Architecture.

Panelist #3: Maxime Bellorge (AKROCEAN)

Very attached to the sea universe, Maxime Bellorge has a dual degree in industrial engineering and project management and he is involved in international maritime projects since 10 years. He led several multimillion maritime projects from design phase to commissioning coordinating multi skills teams in respect of quality, costs and delay. Today, he is responsible of AKROCEAN project management from R&D to commercial aspects

Panelist #4: Bruno Geschier (IDEOL)

Educated on both sides of the Atlantic, Bruno Geschier is the Chief Sales & Marketing Officer of IDEOL and the Chairman of WindEurope´s Floating Offshore Wind Task Force. Beyond promoting his company’s patented floating wind technology, Bruno spends most of his time advocating floating offshore wind to policy makers, financial institutions, asset developers and utilities across the globe. He is a regular speaker and chairperson at offshore wind events in the US, Asia and Europe and co-organizes the world’s largest event solely dedicated to floating offshore wind (FOWT) which takes place each year along France’s Mediterranean coast.

Panelist #5: R.V Ahilan (LOC)

Dr R. V. Ahilan, Joint Group Chief Executive, is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of both IMarEST and RINA. He holds a BSc (Leeds) and MS (Caltech) in Civil Engineering, a PhD (Cantab) in Engineering Fluid Mechanics and an MBA (Imperial). He is a technology and business leader with over three decades of industry experience, more than 15 years of which has been at board level. Prior to LOC, Ahilan was EVP of the Renewables Advisory Division of DNV GL, with strategic and operational responsibility for the world’s largest technical advisory firm in renewable energy formed by the merger of GL Garrad Hassan (of which he was President) and the renewables business of DNV. His offshore oil & gas career spanning three decades was with GL Noble Denton, where he was President Americas, MD Europe and MD Advanced Engineering Consulting. He has worked in the marine operations and ocean engineering aspects of the offshore industry globally and has led projects which have had industry impact in setting standards and safety factors in jack-up site assessment, mooring systems and marine transportation. He has been an expert witness and technical advisor to lawyers in Norway, UAE and the UK on many technically complex cases related to marine operations, drilling rigs and FPSOs. He was a member of the UK HSE panel on mooring guidance and convened the ISO 19901-7 Panel which produced the first ISO standard for Station keeping systems. He has also been a technical advisor to Ph.D. projects in Cambridge University and Imperial College. He was Non-Executive Director of Windfire, a vertical axis wind turbine based distributed renewable energy company and is Advisory Board Member of WavEC Offshore Renewables. He is a Trustee of the charity Marine Technology Trust which supports industrial placements in the marine industry for UK university students. He is also a member of the steering committee of DigiTwin, a collaborative research programme across 6 universities (Sheffield, Liverpool, Swansea, Bristol, Southampton and Cambridge) funded by the UK government to study digital twins for mechanical systems and is on the Advisory Board of Offshore Renewable Energy Supergen that brings together 10 universities in the UK.