Principal Designer

Cairn Risk has been established to meet the growing demand for pragmatic and proportionate risk management support to enable the transition to net carbon zero in a safe, effective and attentive way.

We are an independent adviser to developers, owner-operators and technology providers, primarily around the generation, storage, transmission, transformation and consumption of sustainable energy. We help our clients demonstrate their risks to people, the environment and assets are being managed effectively.

We believe we are ideally suited to performing the PD role on the basis of:

      Our independence and impartiality. Independence and impartiality is crucial for complex energy transition projects such as offshore wind, as they involve a wide range of engineering disciplines and designers. Holding all designers to account for eliminating risks and where not possible reducing them ALARP is a fundamental role of the Principal Designer. Our experience has been that this is demonstrably and more effectively achievable with an independent party as PD, who are not engaged as engineering design consultants, but are fully embedded within project teams, with the authoritative voice to challenge designers throughout every stage of design to ensure the overall project design evolves to a position that can demonstrate risk has been reduced ALARP, and continues to be reduced ALARP through operations. As part of our support to over 10 GW of offshore wind projects, we have also been involved in technical due diligence of the supply chain, including product selection such as asset design reviews e.g. which floating substructure design(s) to select for FEED. It is vital that  clients can get comfortable that the products they are selecting are “Safe by Design” (SBD). For a summary of our experience of supporting product selection on energy transition projects please refer to the following articles published on our website:

o   Informed choices, safer outcomes – a process for off-the-shelf product selection

o   The pitfalls of certification dependency

     Our fixed and floating PD knowledge and experience. We are appointed as PD for 11.5 GW of fixed and floating projects  throughout the UK, with over 5 GW of these are floating wind projects in Scottish waters. As a collaborative team based consultancy our consultants serve a range of offshore wind projects, which are all at varying stages of development; you will see the benefit of our knowledge and experience from across the industry. Furthermore we deliver wider technical safety services across the wind farm supply chain, for developers, owners, operators and wind turbine OEMs. We have a thorough understanding of what’s important and how to execute the PD role in a pragmatic way that supports and enables safe and effective project delivery. For a summary of our experiences of delivering the PD role on energy transition projects please refer to the following articles published on our website:

o   CDM 2015 – The Principles of a Principled Principal Designer

o   Debunking the Myths of CDM 2015 for the Energy Transition

For our observations on how the floating wind industry presents opportunities to reduce the risks associated with its fixed foundation sister, please also refer to the following article published on our website:

o   Untethered Potential – The Risk and Opportunities for Floating Wind