Abstract

An offshore wind farm is, among other things, a fleet of near-identical machines - a hundred or more turbines on identical foundations, joined by identical cables installed by the same contractor using the same method within the same season. That identity is the source of the industry’s efficiency and, when something is wrong, of its most expensive disputes: a defect in one grouted connection, one weld procedure, one cable-protection system or one cable-lay method is rarely confined to one unit. This article treats the resulting serial defect as a problem of dispute-resolution architecture. It shows that the risk is being carried on wordings built for oil and gas (WELCAR 2001) that do not settle the unit of loss, so that two questions - what is the defective ‘part’, and how many ‘occurrences’ a serial failure comprises - are left to be resolved in dispute; that those questions are, in substance, questions of engineering and marine-operations fact; and that they arise not once but across a fan of separate, mostly bilateral, mostly confidential arbitrations spread through the project’s contract chain and insurance tower. The article maps the devices available to coordinate that fan - consolidation, joinder, coordination without merger, and engineered proof - argues that offshore-wind tribunals should be constituted with marine-operational competence alongside construction and insurance expertise, and contends that the whole coordination architecture should be designed into the project’s contracts and policies at financial close. The analysis is confined to process and design and takes no position on the merits of any coverage, aggregation or liability question.

Acknowledgment: A shorter version of the argument in this article appeared as an opinion piece under the same title in Global Reinsurance on 20 August 2026. The author is grateful to Global Reinsurance for permission to draw on that piece here. The present article substantially expands the analysis, and has been revised in light of comments from OGEL’s editor and reviewers.