The best time to solve a problem is before it becomes one

After the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world’s approach to energy changed forever and wind became one of the key technologies expected to help us reach net zero by 2050. Nations set ambitious offshore wind targets as part of the answer to the energy trilemma and, for a while, it seemed everything was moving in the right direction.

Then the pandemic hit, closely followed by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Hyperinflation and supply chain challenges added further pressure and contributed to a major industry reset. The market took a significant hit as developers, consultants, suppliers and EPC contractors revisited their strategies and reshaped their organisations.

Developers building teams after 2024 have been able to learn from that painful period, with some structuring their organisations around secondments or Owner’s Engineer support from the outset.

Now, as projects begin to progress again at a more measured pace, other developers are identifying gaps in their organisations. Rather than recruiting permanent teams to fill every one of them, many are turning to consultancies for flexible access to the capability they need. As a result, the Owner’s Engineer role, once largely reserved for technical review and assurance, has evolved. What developers need from us today is much broader.

The Owner’s Engineer now needs to do much more than review what has already been decided. The real value comes from being involved early enough to help the developer make better decisions in the first place.

There’s an interesting tension at the heart of the Owner’s Engineer role. You need to become close to the project. You need to understand its objectives, constraints and the people and commercial realities surrounding the project. In some cases, members of the Owner’s Engineer team may be embedded alongside the developer’s own people. But you also need to retain enough independence to ask: have we really thought this through? That challenge function is important. And it is most valuable when it comes early.

Finding a problem during a design review is useful. Identifying the decision that could create that problem six months earlier is considerably more useful. That means asking difficult questions about design choices, constructability, procurement, certification, programme and cost while there is still time to do something about them.

But early, broad engagement also gives you something else: the ability to see where one decision is going to affect another. On complex offshore wind projects, that matters because some of the biggest risks don’t necessarily sit within individual packages. They sit at the interfaces between them.

A foundation package may work perfectly well in isolation. So might the turbine, cables, electrical infrastructure and installation strategy. But projects aren’t delivered in isolation.

One decision changes another. Turbine selection affects foundations and cables. Foundation strategy affects fabrication, transport and installation. Electrical architecture has implications across multiple packages. Commercial decisions can change technical priorities.

This is where an effective Owner’s Engineer can bring a different perspective. Rather than asking whether each package works, the question becomes: does the project work as a whole?

That requires multidisciplinary engineering, certainly, but it also requires people who understand how projects are actually delivered. They need to recognise dependencies, identify where responsibilities meet and make sure somebody is looking into the gaps between them. Because those gaps are often where risk hides.

Another lesson is that Owner’s Engineer support needs to flex with the project. Sometimes a developer needs an individual specialist embedded within its team. Sometimes it needs targeted technical assurance and, at other stages, it may need a multidisciplinary team capable of scaling rapidly as activity increases. There’s no reason those models should be mutually exclusive.

The important thing is maintaining continuity while bringing in the right expertise at the right point. A huge team from day one is rarely the answer. Neither is scrambling for specialist support once a critical decision has already landed. The model should evolve with the project.

That is particularly important in offshore wind, where projects can move through periods of intense activity around tendering, FEED and major investment decisions, with the level and type of support required changing as the project progresses.

Our recent appointment as Owner’s Engineer for the Buchan Offshore Wind project has brought many of these principles into sharp focus.

Buchan is a near 1GW floating offshore wind development progressing towards FEED, with Kent supporting activities across electrical balance of plant development, FEED planning, package engineering coordination, tender documentation and wider technical governance. For me, what is interesting is the breadth of that role.

It demonstrates why Owner’s Engineering is increasingly about joining the dots across a project rather than reviewing engineering in separate boxes. And as floating wind moves towards commercial scale, that ability becomes even more important. New technologies, evolving supply chains and complex interfaces create decisions that cannot sensibly be considered from a single technical perspective.

There is a paradox with good Owner’s Engineering: some of its greatest successes are the problems that never happen: the interface issue identified before it reaches fabrication; the specification challenged before it goes to market, or the risk spotted while there are still several options available. The result means decisions are made with a clearer understanding of its downstream consequences.

Those moments rarely make headlines. But collectively they can have a significant impact on cost, programme and, ultimately, whether a project is deliverable. That, to me, is where the Owner’s Engineer role has evolved to, or at least where it needs to be able to pivot when required.

Technical assurance remains fundamental. But the real opportunity is to combine that independence with delivery experience and multidisciplinary thinking. That ability to de-risk the interfaces between packages and being willing to challenge at the point when challenge can make the greatest difference.

The best Owner’s Engineer should not simply tell you whether the engineering works. They should help you see what is coming next.