Case Study: Van Oord achieves centimeter-level positioning and greater efficiency in offshore construction with Trimble marine GNSS solutions

Van Oord’s Precision Focus on Marine Infrastructure Construction

Van Oord is a Dutch, family‑owned marine contractor with 155+ years of experience and 5,800+ employees, known for dredging, coastal protection and offshore wind projects worldwide. As offshore wind farms scale and become more complex, Van Oord needed ever-greater positioning and orientation accuracy for vessels and large monopile foundations—often far offshore without nearby reference stations—and to overcome challenges such as GNSS interference and the strict tolerance of less than 0.1° out of vertical for monopile installation.

Van Oord partnered with Trimble, deploying CenterPoint RTX and a suite of GNSS and motion solutions (R750, BX992, MPS566, Applanix POS MV WaveMaster II and POSPac MMS) to provide centimeter‑level positioning and robust orientation. CenterPoint RTX tested to about 2 cm horizontal / 5 cm vertical accuracy within 100 nm, was fielded on vessels including Aeolus, Svanen and Stingray, and helped Van Oord install the first 50 monopiles by August 2023; combined inertial/GNSS solutions also deliver few‑centimeter positioning, ~0.02° roll/pitch accuracy and improved anti‑jamming resilience, boosting speed, accuracy and reliability.

Van Oord

Wim Balvert

Survey Operations Manager