This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Grouted connections have been extensively used in the oil and gas industry for decades, and more recently their application has been extended to the offshore wind industry. Unfortunately plain-pipe grouted connections for large-diameter monopile foundations have recently exhibited clear signs of insufficient axial capacity, resulting in slippage between the transition piece and monopile. Motivated by the emergence of such problems, this paper presents a critical review of the technical literature related to the experimental testing for grouted connections for offshore substructures, covering all the key material and design parameters that influence their capacity, including the confinement provided by pile and sleeve, surface finish, simultaneous bending action, connection length, dynamic loading, early-age cycling during grout curing, grout shrinkage, radial pre-stress and temperature. The review also focuses on the relevance of such parameters for offshore wind applications and addresses what needs to be considered to ensure that their design achieves the desired capacity, behaviour and efficiency

This is an open access article published by Elsevier under the CC BY license (http://\ud creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Relative displacements between grout and steel have been observed in grouted connections used for offshore wind turbine substructures, which appear to be linked to the unexpected settlements that have occurred in some offshore wind farms. A literature review has highlighted a lack of understanding of the implications that this relative movement has on the grout wear. Experimentation has therefore been undertaken to determine the influence of various factors on the wear development, including compressive stress, displacement amplitude, surface roughness and the presence of water, looking at conditions typically experienced by offshore grouted connections. These experiments have indicated that wear of the steel and grout surfaces occur, even at low magnitude compressive stresses. The presence of water has the most significant impact on wear rate, being up to 18 times higher than for the equivalent dry condition. The presence of water can also significantly reduce the coefficient of friction to values lower than typically recommended for evaluation of grouted connections. These findings demonstrate that wear of the grouted connection is likely to occur over the life of this type of offshore structures and should therefore be considered when evaluating their integrity and assessing their behaviour

This article was published in the serial Journal of Management in Engineering [© ASCE]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000085The need to improve collaborative working, knowledge sharing, and operational effectiveness has made effective Information Management a growing priority for Architecture and Engineering (A & E) organizations in the UK construction industry. While significant research has been carried out in the construction industry on project Information Management, limited work has been carried out to understand Information Management from an organisational paradigm. This paper presents the findings of an investigation into the nature of Information Management within A & E organizations in the UK construction industry. Interviews were conducted with experts across nine large architectural and multidisciplinary consultancies, the outputs of which were analysed using thematic analysis. From this, 26 themes across three core categories classed as drivers, constraining factors, and barriers which shape Information Management practices in construction organizations emerged. The findings show that Information Management is indeed of strategic significance to organizations and an organizational dimension is necessary to better align information needs with an organisation’s operational processes. They also show that context-dependent factors exist which shape the nature of Information Management in line with the specific needs of each organizations. Therefore, the effectiveness of an organisation’s Information Management practices is not absolute, but rather relative to its level of alignment to the organisation’s chosen mode of operation. The findings provide a much needed practical view of the complexities of Information Management, highlighting that particularly within multidisciplinary organizations; a unifying approach is much more practical and appropriate than a single approach to managing information