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NETWORK / 27 / MARCH 2019 POWERING SCOTLAND OVERCOMING CHALLENGES SSEN had to overcome a number of challenges while working on the project. Here, Tony Scott breaks down the challenges faced and how they were met. Onshore works – working across a number of outlying locations in the remote highlands of Scotland presented a number of logistical challenges. From the practicalities of moving major infrastructure equipment to site, working at over 250m above sea level and the winter weather challenges this brings, to the inherent challenges of the Highland terrain. Building on our track record of delivering large scale critical national infrastructure, learning the lessons from other pro- jects such as Beauly-Denny, these challenges were safely overcome through robust planning and careful project management. Offshore works - the key challenges for the offshore cable centred around its routing and also the installation of bundled HVDC cable. The offshore route from Noss Head in Caithness to Portgordon in Moray crosses a number of seabed types including one which has been - and is still being used – for various purposes. A significant amount of route engineering was performed with numerous development surveys to reach the final route alignment. As the area has seen active conflict, the presence of unexploded ordnance (UXO) presents a significant risk to the cable instal- lation and detailed geophysical surveys of the seabed were required to micro route the cable around numerous magnetic anomalies which were interpreted as potential UXO. Environment - Both onshore and offshore there were a number of challenges to successfully mitigate our impact on national environ- mental designations and protected species. Again, building on our track record of delivering critical national infrastructure across the north of Scotland, often in sensitive natural environments, we were able to overcome these challenges through robust planning and care- ful project management and execution, including the use of various species and environmental protection plans. 1. Installation of the Caithness-Moray Spittal substation transformer. 2. An overhead shot of the Caithness-Moray Spittal substation. 4. Cable drums at Wick Harbour. 3. A cable drum at Caithness-Moray. 5. A cable laying vessel. DECARBONISATION OF TRANSPORT DECARBONISATION OF HEAT