The commercial case for early intervention is significant; Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult reports that a single subsea cable failure takes an average of around two months to repair and can often exceed £10 million in costs and lost power generation. While CPS instability is only one potential contributor to cable failure, addressing an identified support problem before cable integrity is compromised can reduce the risk of more disruptive maintenance and offshore repair campaigns.
CPS instability can arise where systems are affected by inadequate support, design issues, or early degradation. At the cable-to-foundation interface, waves, currents, and complex hydrodynamic loading can contribute to movement of unsupported spans, increasing fatigue and the potential for more significant cable integrity issues.
FoundOcean’s CPS Remedial Stabilization Solution uses engineered grout-filled eco-friendly fabric formwork to provide precise, secure support where it is required. Engineered around the cable, seabed conditions, and geometry of each location, the formwork conforms to the seabed profile and can be deployed within restricted or congested subsea areas.
This allows a localized problem to be treated with a localized intervention. The fabric formworks provide an engineered solution that can support the bags evenly across the required span and cradle the cable, allowing for controlled movement or restraint as required.
Compared with conventional rock dumping or rock-bag placement, FoundOcean’s innovative approach is designed to use less material and provide a lower-impact solution. It gives operators controlled, location-specific support rather than extending the intervention across a wider area.
The approach has already been applied on an offshore wind project, where a FoundOcean-engineered grout-filled fabric formwork addressed the specific conditions at the affected CPS locations. The project provided targeted support within the existing subsea environment, demonstrating how the Solution can be adapted to local cable geometry, seabed conditions, and installation constraints.
Kerr Wright, Managing Director of FoundOcean, said: “Our flexible eco-friendly fabric formwork solution allows us to provide that support around the specific cable and site conditions and place it precisely where it is needed. We can work within constrained subsea areas and provide secure support without treating a localized problem as though it requires a broad seabed intervention.
“For operators looking at the remaining life of their assets, this provides a fast and efficient way to strengthen vulnerable CPS now and reduce the risk of a much more disruptive intervention further down the line.”
The Solution builds on FoundOcean’s established experience in subsea fabric formworks and offshore grouting, applying proven engineering capability to the asset integrity challenges emerging across offshore wind infrastructure.
Steve Coates, Chief Operating Officer at Venterra Group, said: “Energy security depends on the offshore assets that keep clean power flowing. As the wind sector matures, protecting those assets from avoidable failure is becoming just as important as building new capacity.
“FoundOcean’s CPS Remedial Stabilization Solution is a strong example of how Venterra companies bring the experience, specialist skills, and practical offshore capability to strengthen resilience across critical infrastructure and help operators protect long-term asset performance.”
FoundOcean has more than six decades of offshore experience and provides life-extension solutions for subsea assets, including freespan correction for pipelines and cables, pipeline rehabilitation, and structural strengthening and repair.
