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Vinny MontemurroBurns & McDonnell
Vincent (Vinny) Montemurro serves Burns & McDonnell as a project manager supporting offshore wind projects. With three years of transmission line design and six years of project management experience, Vinny leverages his skillsets to execute successful projects on time and on budget while forging relationships with his team members.
He attended the University of Connecticut where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in business administration. Vinny is also a licensed professional engineer. Throughout his career with Burns & McDonnell, he has served as a lead engineer on numerous projects in addition to serving as the project manager on a portfolio of capital projects for a variety of utility clients ranging from $1M to $150M. Vinny is the orchestrator of his project teams which typically includes anywhere from 10 to 100 individuals that support each of the engineering, permitting, legal, project controls, external affairs, real estate, and construction disciplines.
As a project manager, Vinny goes above and beyond to be sure that his team, external stakeholders, and the overall project is set-up for success. He understands the importance of transparency to further strengthen relationships between internal and external parties. In 2020 Vinny’s breadth of industry experience, along with his proven abilities to successfully lead a team and manage projects from conception to completion, opened a new door in the burgeoning offshore wind industry.
When presented with the opportunity to support the Ørsted and Eversource joint venture, South Fork Wind, Vinny was eager to lead a project that will further drive the clean energy transition goals for the state of New York and the U.S. Vinny displays great initiative and drive to continuously expand his knowledge of and relationships in the offshore wind industry by attending conferences, reading industry literature/white papers, and presenting to interested community members. He is also a great advocate for knowledge share amongst industry peers related to his experiences in the world of offshore wind thus far.
In addition to his role as project manager, Vinny serves as an exemplary mentor for up-and-coming colleagues in the industry. Vinny is especially passionate about the renewable energy industry because of his love for the outdoors and fervent desire to maintain the natural world to be experienced by future generations.
Sarah SchweitzerVineyard Wind
Sarah graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2017 with a degree in civil engineering. Out of college, she worked as a Project Engineer for a commercial construction company before being selected as one of only 75 people to participate in the Congress- Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX), a fellowship funded by the German Bundestag and U.S. Department of State. The program provides young professionals the opportunity to spend one year in Germany studying, interning, and living with hosts on a cultural immersion program.
Through that program, Sarah interned at Merkur Offshore GmbH where she developed her passion for offshore wind. During that time, Merkur was constructing the Merkur Offshore Wind Farm in the North Sea consisting of 66 GE Halidade 6 MW turbines. Upon conclusion of the program, Sarah returned to the U.S. and joined Peak Wind, which serves as Vineyard Wind’s strategic operations and maintenance contractor. Sarah began her work with Vineyard Wind as an engineering consultant focusing on developing operations and maintenance concepts and strategies.
Sarah’s talent and work ethic quickly stood out, which led to her involvement in multiple aspects of the project, including managing the acquisition of certain sites, permitting, negotiating leases, addressing export cable issues, appearing before public bodies, procurement, and managing other contractors. She successfully led the team that secured all airport operations for the project and managed a team of outside consultants through a difficult permitting process for marine terminal operations. Within two short years, she became a Senior Consultant at Peak Wind and an invaluable and admired member of the Vineyard Wind team.
The past two years have seen Sarah play a leading role in the fulfillment of one of the Vineyard Wind 1 project’s most important goals: to anchor the VW Operations and Maintenance facility on Martha’s Vineyard. Due in large part to Sarah’s leadership, this facility is nearing full permits and will become operational concurrent with the Vineyard Wind 1 project, hosting the vessels, aircraft infrastructure, and personnel supports that are essential for the ongoing operation of the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind facility. While the establishment of these facilities is challenging no matter the geography, the complex physical, regulatory and economic environment on Martha’s Vineyard make Sarah’s successes unique and worthy of significant admiration.
Eagle WuVinciVR
VinciVR, led by CEO Eagle Wu, has developed the world’s first Virtual Reality (VR) modules for Global Wind Organisation (GWO)-certified training in partnership with Siemens Gamesa and with funding from Massachusetts CleanEnergy Center and Vineyard Wind. The technology enables courses to be held anywhere, anytime. The software passed GWO audits in 2022 and 12 union workers tasked with building Vineyard 01 were the first in the world to be certified with VR. Eagle is 25 years old.
Vinci worked with SGRE to recreate one of their turbines in an immersive 3D VR simulation and worked with their staging team to create a VR Marshalling port. From there, Eagle directed his team to recreate these hands-on tasks in VR by creating realistic simulations of tools used in commissioning and hand gesture recognition software to enable the use of real hand signals to direct crane lifts. Over the course of a year, Vinci refined these simulations to meet critical requirements for GWO certification, and by 2022, these courses passed GWO audits with these VR tools. Now, a $5M nacelle and $100k+ crane and accompanying tools were replaced by a $400 VR headset at no loss of hands-on, worksite, and safety training value.
VinciVR is an alumna of the 2022 IPF Startup Alley program.
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At the Oceantic Network, formerly known as the Business Network for Offshore Wind, our driving purpose is to inform, coordinate, and mobilize human ingenuity, enterprise, and labor to take advantage of the urgent need to tap the vast renewable energy resources that lie offshore in the world’s oceans. The collective, coordinated efforts of our members equip communities and nations to accelerate the transition to clean energy and create economic opportunities.
November 9, 2023
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