COWI pursues agile transformation with offshore wind customers

“We have highly qualified engineers in our offices in Denmark and abroad, and we have excellent tools. However, we saw a need to fully integrate and automate our end-to-end design process to give our customers even more optimized design solutions as a basis for decisions,”- says Knud Erik Thomsen, Program Director at COWI.

“We need to be data-driven to stay relevant. And we must utilize the cloud to facilitate an efficient design process and embrace the principles of DevOps where a product is never finalized but continually improves in line with customers’ needs. This is a new way of working with software development hence we needed experienced people to assist our journey.” – he says.

After an evaluation process, Minds and Co. was chosen as a partner. Minds and Co. assisted in building the new COWIND Digital Toolchain for the Operation COWIND Programme and has played a crucial role in the organizational changes resulting from the new methods.

“We were looking for a partner with a deep understanding of how to create software collaboratively within offshore renewables. The winning criteria for selecting Minds and Co. were their understanding of both the industry, the disciplines involved, and the aspects of digitalization, which is crucial in a transformation process like this. When we introduce a new way of developing and maintaining software and we want people to embrace the cloud and adopt a new mindset, it is important with a partner who can communicate effectively with our project team and specialists,” – says Charlotte Søgaard, Senior Business Development Director at COWI.

“We are not a software company, and terms like Agile and Scrum are not widely used in our organization. Therefore, it is important for us to have a partner like Minds and Co., who not only possesses the technical expertise but also experience in how to support agile principles like Scrum,” she explains.

The COWIND Digital Toolchain considers thousands of distinct parameters to determine optimized, predictable, and consistent designs for offshore wind foundations. And by operating in the cloud, the toolchain generates designs fast and efficiently while allowing for easy scalability and adaptability to changing design requirements.

“We have not changed our tools; we have created a digital platform for design optimization. In simplified terms, our engineers can enter data into the streamlined platform, press a button, and receive a finished report as a basis for a further detailed quality assessment. And together with our customers, smoothly evaluate, update, and run new design iterations in line with their scaling ambitions. By ensuring full traceability and standardization according to the highest industry standards, the COWIND Digital Toolchain allows us to enter into a new digital league, making us an even more attractive partner to companies wanting to stay ahead of the development within offshore wind,”– explains Knud Erik Thomsen.

“The Operation COWIND Program has enormous significance both in the current phase and when we plan to further roll out the digital transformation in the Renewable Energy division. It is a prestige project, headed by a bold COWI leadership team that is generating considerable attention and moving us a step up in our digital maturity,”– concludes Charlotte Søgaard.