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Elia, Belgium’s electricity transmission system operator, has issued a tender invitation for providers of seabed survey and seasoil sampling on the East Coast of Belgium for submarine power cables and an offshore platform.

Elia plans a high-voltage substation located on an offshore platform in the North Sea which should act as a modular grid or ‘power socket’ for offshore wind farms. The substation would, in turn, be connected to the onshore grid instead of having the wind farms connect individually to it.

The contractor will be required to deliver following services:

• Marine geophysical, geotechnical and benthic survey along the propose cable corridor including the intertidal;
• Marine geophysical, geotechnical and benthic survey for a platform including the intertidal;
• Survey design and planning;
• Bathymetric survey (multibeam);
• Seabed feature identification; natural and man made (by sidescan sonar and multibeam backscatter) including habitat identification;
• Ferrous object detection; cables, pipelines, debris, wrecks, ordnance etc;
• Shallow geology survey (sub-bottom profile) to a nominal 10m below seabed;
• Seabed material sampling and particle size analysis (by shallow sampling; stills photography of the sample on landing);
• Imagery; seabed material type, ecological (by stills on landing the sample); Benthic analysis; taxonomy, species count, biomass (by
  grab sampling);
• Geotechnical survey to a nominal 10m below the seabed (by coring and CPT);
• Survey reporting;
• Data delivery including GIS formats.
• Seabed survey proposal for the submarine cables: technical feasibility and alternatives;
• Seabed survey proposal for the platform: technical feasibility and alternatives.

The contracting authority did not reveal the budget for the potential contract.

The deadline for the submission of tenders is April 4, 2016.