The Lego Mindset: Why Offshore Wind Must Standardise to Succeed

Remember Christmas or Birthdays as a child? The excitement of receiving a Lego set. And the feeling of immense pride when you complete it before lunch. Those were the days! So, tell me this. Why can’t we take this modular thinking into today’s offshore wind? Of course, we can’t build an offshore wind farm in a morning or make it out of Lego, but could we adopt the simplicity in design that Lego has to reduce the circa 10-year duration of today’s offshore wind projects. Or should I say why can’t we.

In How Big Things Get Done, Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner identify offshore wind as one of the top five project types that deliver predictability when compared with a variety of project types from house conversions to nuclear power stations. (Make a note to self: this book is worth reading!). On paper, that sounds reassuring. But for those of us inside the industry, the reality feels very different. Projects are buffeted by policy reform and planning delays, commodity inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, lack of manufacturing investment, and disproportionate transfer of risk down into the supply chain. Add in innovation lags and regulatory uncertainty, and predictability feels far less certain.

So why the disconnect? Flyvbjerg and Gardner focus on the construction phase. By then, offshore wind projects can indeed be delivered within one or two campaigns, giving the impression of tight control. But the upstream risks, the years of project development before FID, are out of frame. So, in their analysis, what does make offshore wind successful? Modular thinking and standardisation. Or what’s described as “the Lego effect.”

The Standardisation Gap

Their case is strongest with wind turbine generators. For the blades, towers and the turbine itself, OEMs adopt a ‘product’ mindset: components are ‘production line’ manufactured, much like the automotive and aviation industries. That’s why the turbine is the icon of offshore wind’s success. But when it comes to the rest of the system such as the foundations, cables, substations, and, increasingly, floating infrastructure (107 concepts and counting), the Lego effect ceases. Every one of these elements is treated as bespoke, engineered from scratch for each project or in the case of floaters, too much variety. To be fair, there are geological and site-specific factors that affect some items, but that doesn’t explain the lack of standardisation of many of the main building blocks. With careful design choices and a change in mindset, these could be standardised and replicated, driving down costs, shortening lead times, and reducing systemic risk.

So, the question is: why have we failed to learn from the turbine OEMs and other industries, who embraced standardisation and turned it into a competitive advantage?

Returning to the Lego analogy, maintaining building block simplicity is key. Lego faced a crisis in the early 2000s after overcomplicating its product lines with an excess of specialised bricks. To recover, the company dramatically simplified its offerings, refocusing on its iconic standard blocks and core building system. This strategic shift reignited Lego’s success and reaffirmed its place as a global leader in imaginative play. Simplicity is key.

Though it predates me, a great example of how simplicity and standardisation can drive massive gains comes from World War II. Liberty ships, mass produced cargo vessels built by the United States showcased groundbreaking achievements in modular fabrication and standardisation. Designed for speed and simplicity, their build time dropped from 244 days to just 42. Their uniform design enabled scalable manufacturing of over 2,700 ships built across 18 shipyards. Offshore wind needs its own “back to basics” moment. Standardisation is not the enemy of innovation; it’s the enabler. By agreeing on the core building blocks, we free engineers to innovate at the system level: speed, scale, and integration, rather than constantly redesigning the fundamentals.

So, what’s in the way? A mix of individual preferences, commercial competition, fragmented supply chains, and the inertia of “how we’ve always done it.” Everyone wants to differentiate, but too often we compete on the wrong things. Communities don’t care if their wind farm uses a uniquely shaped jacket foundation, they care about affordable, secure and reliable power that arrives on time.

Breaking this cycle will require collaboration and the willingness to simplify and standardise. For example, by agreeing on standard substation or converter designs with developers, OFTOs and TSOs (we see Tennet taking this approach in Germany with their 2GW program), or government organisations choosing to select one or two floater concepts which they invest in alongside the private sector aiding the acceleration to commercial scale deepwater wind. These types of standardisation initiatives coupled with a predictable pipeline and timeline breeds confidence and unlock investment.

The energy transition is not a theoretical challenge. It is a race against time. To deliver secure energy supplies, keep homes warm, power industries, and meet net-zero targets, offshore wind must scale faster than ever before. That won’t happen if we insist on bespoke solutions for every new project. However, let’s be clear, standardisation is not the silver bullet that makes wind a sustainable business, but it is one of the key challenges we have today which can add risk, cost and time to offshore wind projects.

The call to action is simple: think Lego. Simplification. Standardisation. Modualrisation. Production line thinking. Offshore wind has already shown it can be one of the world’s most predictable project types. Now it must prove it can be one of the fastest.

Because if as a child you could build a Lego masterpiece before lunch, surely the world’s best engineers can deliver an offshore wind project in less than a decade.