General comments:

Thank you to the editorial team and the authors for the opportunity to review. These comments and questions are presented for consideration. Overall, the report covers an important topic and presents interesting interview results that add valuable perspective. Specific sections of the manuscript seem to be well written while others read overly verbose, which makes certain sections difficult to follow. Streamlining the narrative and improving transitions between sections could help enhance clarity and readability. The writing style occasionally feels formulaic, and a careful editorial review to ensure consistency in tone and flow may strengthen the overall presentation.

While the findings generally align with expected outcomes, the discussion could more clearly emphasize actionable recommendations for industry stakeholders, particularly regarding strategies to reduce risks and system costs. The paper would also benefit from incorporating more quantifiable comparisons where possible, e.g., if a particular risk management was implemented it could reduce system LCOE by 15%. In several sections, it was challenging to identify which factors had the largest influence on key economic metrics such as NPV or LCOE, getting lost in what seemed like distracting text to core discussion topics that could be more concisely written. The conclusion of the paper may benefit from a more synthesized perspective of the work. Perhaps by pulling together a summary table of results highlighting the highest priority risks, the relative impact of those risks, and the major drivers the offshore wind industry could invest in would help readers quickly understand the most consequential results and improve the practical usefulness of the study.

Specific comments:

Line 11: Define 'asymmetric downside risk' and 'long-tailed loss distributions' in the Abstract section. Alternatively, avoid using these terms in the Abstract and consider alternative language to help the reader understand these themes.

Line 39: is the construction of the wind plant included in the 'development' phase?

Line 42: it's most likely defined later, but what is a 'tool chain?'

Line 50: is the 'maintenance performance' defining the efficiency of the maintenance activities or the performance of the wind plant?

Line 52: It may be worth including a graphic defining the phases of a wind project. The descriptions of the phases seem to be changing throughout the paper.

Line 58: if not defined later in the manuscript, it would be nice to include some high-level stats on the structured survey, e.g., approximately how many experts, etc.

Line 65: would benefit the definition of 'sector challenge.' Is this specific to the wind sector?

Line 93: the 'constant power output' does not consider time-series wind resource?

Line 99: 'access constraints' are defined by events such as high winds or harsh seas?

Line 104: is this impacting the OPEX costs or affecting the finance assumptions of the project?

Line 108: should the performance degradation theoretically start once the project is operating instead of at the end of the design life.

Line 261: assuming the OPEX, energy, and other variables in the LCOE equation are being held constant for this assessment. May be worth explaining these assumptions in a bit more detail.

Line 438: did the approach consider failures beyond the wind turbine, e.g., substructure or cables?

Line 588: Was it intentional to keep NPV and remove LCOE from Figure 8?

Line 742: Is it worth showing the impacts on LCOE in Figure 10. How much impact does the OPEX lever have?

Line 745: Is there significance to the shaded areas in Figure 11 as compared to box and whiskers?

Line 879: Is there a cost associated with implementation of O&M best practices?

Line 1008: these are the types of identified conclusions make sense and placing emphasis on what might be possible to lower costs or increase performance would strengthen the outcome of the study.

Line 1032: 'Overall' appears to be used a couple of times in the Conclusion but in different context. It was challenging to conclude the overall points of the analysis with the swarm of information.

Technical corrections:

Line 104: typo, 'into to' change to 'into.'

Line 130: is 'Risk' capitalized intentionally?

Line 130: should 'section' be capitalized?

Line 166: looks like part of the chart label got cut off on the right-hand side.

Line 977: This paragraph reads repetitious of the one prior.

General comments:

I think that manuscript covers a very important topic. Following comments are for the purpose to improve it. Overall, the manuscript presents a huge amount of data and at moments it can be overwhelming for a reader. While some sections of the manuscript seem to be better written than others, I believe that the manuscript would benefit from major technical revision (specific comment to follow) and would improve readability. At moments, it is very hard to follow the story due to “heavy language” (things can be simplified and written in a much better way) and way too many inconsistencies (with sections missing subsections or having an extra subtitles,…) and typos (missing apprentices, capital letters where there should not be one, abbreviations without introduction/explanation). 

The work synthesized previous findings while offering some additional info. Still, as the authors stated themselves, this work still offers “fragmented risk treatment and provides a structured starting point for developing integrated,” but doesn’t offer any better picture of “integrated” risk, and conclusion is lacking better guidance of how to reach this “integrated” tools. I had a hard time to identify for each section which factors had the largest influence on key metrics, so once again, I do believe that the manuscript needs a major overhaul. Also, I'm not sure that all data used in this work can be equaly applied accros the ocean; I'm not sure we are looking at the same risk when we are talking abouth on- or off-shore wind farms at "all stages of life" depending if it is located in the USA or Europe.

Specific comments:

All abbreviations in the text need to be explained when used for the first time (and only 20ish percent was explained in the text). WINPACT, CAPEX, LCOE, NPV,… (and many more) might be known to the people from the field but should be clearly explained to those who are not so familiar with a field abbreviation(s).

Line 93: It would be very useful to have a graphical representation/diagram of WINDPACK flow; to help with understanding why some modules are called "downstream" modules. Also, by providing a visual representation, it will help more people to grasp how things are organized and how they interact and influence each other.

Line 134: “For each risk category, multiple scenarios are developed based on literature, available data, and the judgment of the authors” I think some additional info on how the authors made those decisions (just a quick overview).

Line 136: It would be nice to know a bit more about “common baseline scenario is defined”

Lene 139: Risk identification and categorization section: I’m curious if there is a difference in risk identification and categorization between USA and Europe, and why. Also, I’m curious if there is a difference in survey results between the USA and Europe (I would think there is, and it might affect risk identification and categorization). Generally, would it be useful to 

Line 225: I had an impression that every subsection of the “4. Review and quantification” section will have a Review and Impact Assessment subsection, but while some do, some are missing those components (for example “4.2 Long-term asset viability - Through-life decision making” only has “4.2.1 Impact assessment”). Please be consistent and either include have a Review and Impact Assessment subsection for each section, or don’t include for any. This inconsistency makes things hard to follow.

Line 274: "We obtain long-term price indices for these commodities from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics" is there the same data available for the EU and whould the authors expect to see any difference (and why yeas or no). 

Line 341: missing apprentices for “Carroll et al. (2016); Donnelly et al. (2024); Dinwoodie et al. (2013).”  There are several other places that are missing or have extra apprentices.

Line 401: “However, the resulting assessments remain highly project-specific and dependent on boundary conditions.” What are those boundary conditions?

Line 474: “Transmission constraints” Is this a subsection? As I stated before, this manuscript needs a major overhaul in terms of unifying formatting and keep it consistent. This way it is too hard and confusing to follow.

Line 977-982: These sections are duplicated.