FEED study for a research platform

Project description

To further develop Flanders'leading position in the blue energy sector, the province of West-Flanders (POM) wants to supports the technological development.

One way to do that is boosting state-of-the-art testing infrastructure for the maritime and marine developments. Test in real conditions and infrastructure on an industrially relevant scale is crucial for conducting research, testing new industrial concepts, build credentials and may in some cases also be used for training. 

In order to realize this technological development, the POM wants to take advantage of the existent Factory for the Future Blue Energy, which facilitates industrial research through a coherent framework and custom infrastructure to test in a maritime environment. This is also a focus point within the strategy of Flanders ' Maritime Cluster, in particular to marine innovation locations. In March 2016 an integrated Territorial Investment file was submitted to ERDF (European Regional Development Funds), named Blue Accelerator. The realization of a maritime innovation and development platform at sea 1 km off the coast of Ostend is one of the objectives of this project. This platform should allow maritime development in the broad sense: Blue energy, aquaculture, coastal protection, blue growth, ...

The project was realised in a later phase as the Blue Accelerator platform.

 

Service description

Preparation of a FEED study (Front End Engineering & Design) for the maritime innovation and development platform at sea. The output of this study will be the input for the further 3 parts of the project: juridical, financial and technical.
The FEED study includes:

• The preparation of a main scenario taking into account: the design criteria already identified from the requests of the stakeholders; modularity to allow multidisciplinary maritime research; and future unknown needs;
• Preparation of an alternative scenario;
• Assess the eventual impact of the location of the structure;
• Participate in a workshop with the stakeholders to present the draft version of the main scenario and alternatives;
• Preparation of a working plan with indication of the milestones for its implementation.