Successful inaugural meeting of the WFO Offshore Dispute Resolution Committee

On Friday May 28 in Hamburg, the Offshore Dispute Resolution Committee of the World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO) had its inaugural meeting, held online with the presence of 21 top officials from WFO members involved in dispute resolution, announcing accordingly the creation of the ODRC as an Offshore Alternative Dispute Resolution implement.

Tobias Voigt, international lawyer at Carneades Legal, adjudicator, expert in Offshore wind and the Chairman of ODRC delivered speech presenting WFO´s vision for Offshore wind industry and underlining the challenges faced by the practitioners in the field, followed by a presentation about ODRC as the organizational body of WFO. Tobias has explained how the creation of ODRC is an illustration of the desire to contribute to the impetus of the development of the Offshore Wind market through an aimed leading role in the promotion of the ADR mechanisms within the industry. Tobias also extended the greetings of the WFO General Counsel and Co-Chair of the ODRC, Christian Knütel, who could not take part in the inaugural meeting, as he was truly offshore (on a sailing trip).

A special emphasis was dedicated to highlight the “corner stone” idea behind the initiative consisting of disseminating the culture of ADR and more specifically exert proceedings and adjudication as the adapted alternative means to settle disputes between contracting parties acting within the offshore wind cosmos.

During the meeting, Tobias has also answered several questions of WFO Members who attended the event remotely and enthusiastically interacted with the different issues tackled during the discussions.

The meeting was an occasion for the participants to share their points of view and to express their concerns before giving feedback and exchanging ideas about the initiative. Tobias Invited all the members to contribute to the process of development of the ODRC in the direction of promoting ADR at the level of the Offshore Wind Industry and raising awareness of the importance of this mechanism in alleviating the resolving of claims.

Tobias pointed out, that the ODRC aims to ensure opportunities for different practitioners and actors of the market to engage and participate in such project which is made-to-order for replying to the specific and particular imperatives of the industry.

In an outlook, Tobias introduced the future roadmap of development of both an WFO dispute expert list together with rules for expert proceedings and the further development of WFO adjudication rules.

The committee will come together every three months in its general assembly, with the possibility of assigning special tasks to sub-committees.

Press Contact:
CARNEADES Legal Rechtsanwälte Voigt und Kruse PartG mbB
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22297 Hamburg
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