Use of response forecasting in decision making for weather sensitive offshore construction work

Response forecasting is an emerging technology for supporting decision-making during offshore construction work. The method aims to improve the reliability and efficiency of weather-sensitive operations. This article identifies the motivations, advantages, and challenges of implementing a response forecasting decision-support service in an offshore organization from the perspective of an installation contractor. In addition, a case study based on a recent pipelay operation exemplifies the method and its impact on decision-making. •Response forecasting can improve the accuracy of offshore decision-making for weather-sensitive operations.•Continuous and automated analysis during operation allows the inclusion of specific forecasted multimodal wave conditions.•Decision makers are presented with information that is directly relevant to their decision.•Computationally intensive time domain simulations make response forecasting difficult.•There is no industry agreement on the inclusion of forecast uncertainty on a 2-dimensional wave spectrum.