Despite the fact that the wind industry has a strong focus on the development of floating offshore wind turbines, it is still missing a widely recognised and unified approach for the practical methods to build and validate the numerical models, in accordance with the requirements in the standards. Standardisation is a key milestone to guide the industry towards the development of reliable floating wind turbines. Guidance includes setting up minimum requirements for the design on new concepts that can help investors' evaluation, and supporting the more mature technologies towards a safe and secure commercialisation.

The participants come from a broad range of industries, including utilities, component manufacturing, engineering consultants, maritime research institutes, shipyards and academic research. The following companies are contributing to the development of the new Recommended Practice: Ramboll, Ideol, EDF, MARIN, STX Solutions Europe, Esteyco, NAUTILUS Floating Solutions, Dr. Techn. Olav Olsen, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), GICON®, Glosten, Atkins, MARINTEK.

The new Recommended Practice will build on the experience from the application of the Offshore Standard DNV-OS-J103 "Design of Floating Wind Turbine Structures" which was published in 2013 and will contain methods and ways to fulfil the requirements set in DNV-OS-J103.

Based on the latest knowledge and practical know-how, the joint approach of developing the future Recommended Practice will greatly reduce the risk of inadequate analysis, leading to substantial time savings. Further advantages stem from the focus on the design of floating wind turbines and the validation of numerical models in respect to their subsequent certification. The coherent structure of the Recommended Practice also provides a unified cost structure for the project development process.