Your substructure strategy is locked at FEED. Today it is a judgment call.

One common design across the portfolio wastes steel on milder sites. Site-by-site optimization pays one-off fabrication on every unit. Nobody has published a model that prices both sides. I’m building one at NTNU — and the portfolio owners who join decide which cases it answers first.

Sound familiar?

A hundred concepts, no convergence

Floating wind has 100+ competing substructure concepts and no fifteen years to converge the way bottom-fixed did on the monopile. The narrowing has to happen at FEED, deliberately.

Portfolio decisions made site by site

Each project optimizes its own substructure. What commonality across your pipeline would save — or cost — is priced nowhere.

CAPEX concentrated in the substructure

Substructure and foundation carry roughly a quarter of floating CAPEX (NREL figures), and material mass is the most volatile lever inside that share — exactly what standardization trades away.

What participation buys you

Nothing below rests on a promise. Today you get influence and early access. The computational results arrive on the published research schedule through 2028 — and participants see each step first.

Your portfolio defines the case studies

I need realistic site families — spreads of depth, metocean, soil. Participants steer which archetypes and portfolio shapes get modeled first, on coarse, non-confidential envelopes.

A defensible method for the standardize call

A published, physics-grounded trade-off curve beats judgment in front of boards and lenders. Participants stress-test it before it goes public.

Early findings, pre-publication

Over-design penalties across metocean classes, and the cost of commonality for representative portfolios — shared as results mature.

The cost of participating

The entry point is one conversation about how substructure strategy decisions are made at FEED, and what evidence would move them. Interviews run under NTNU research-ethics procedures and are anonymized by default — organisations are never named without written consent. Everything beyond the interview is optional and separately agreed.

A 45-minute interview

With a FEED, concept-selection, or portfolio-strategy lead. How the standardize-or-customize question shows up in your process, and what evidence would change the call.

Later, optionally: portfolio envelopes

Coarse site characteristics — depth ranges, metocean classes — to build realistic site families. No confidential project data.

A funded NTNU doctoral program, not a vendor

This is a three-year NTNU-funded doctoral fellowship (2026–2029) in the Production Management group, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Methods and code are published openly. There is nothing for sale.

You talk to me directly — Evgeny Ramenskiy, PhD candidate. Data is handled under NTNU research data agreements. Interviews run on informed consent, with the right to withdraw at any time.

Next step

Two minutes: tell me who you are and what you'd want out of it. You get a concrete interview proposal — topics, anonymity terms, scheduling — within a few days.

Express interest

Or email directly: evgeny.ramenskiy@ntnu.no