Andreas Kipker, CEO of Jupiter Bach, discusses their dominance in wind turbine nacelle and spinner cover manufacturing and major U.S. expansion plans, including a new 20,000-square-foot facility in Pensacola and two decades of partnership with GE Vernova.
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Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. And today we have an exceptional guest who brings deep insight from one of the wind industry’s most important manufacturing sectors. Andreas Kipker is the CEO of Jupiter Bach, the world’s largest supplier of nacelle and spinner covers for wind turbines.
Andreas joins us at an exciting time for Jupiter Bach the company just celebrated a remarkable 20 year partnership with GE Vernova and broke ground on a 20, 000 square foot expansion of their Pensacola, Florida facility.
And today under Andreas’s leadership, Jupiter Bach operates state of the art manufacturing facilities across Europe, Asia, and North America. The company’s focus goes beyond just manufacturing. They’re driving innovation in composite materials and. Engineering to help reduce the levelized cost of energy for wind power.
Andreas, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.
Andreas Kipker: Thank you very much. Pleased to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.
Allen Hall: Well, Jupiter Bach is the world’s largest supplier of nacelles and spinner covers. Could you give us just a sense of what your global footprint looks like?
Andreas Kipker: Absolutely. Happy to do that.
Yeah, so, um, In the global market, we consider ourselves leaders. We have, um, we have factories. We have four main manufacturing facilities one in China two in Europe, then Poland and Lithuania, and then one in Sonia, Florida. Um, and then adding to that’s where we do our composites. And then, and in addition to that, we have we have a number of assembly sites that are.
closer to servicing this Nacelle manufacturing plants assembly plants of our customers. So they’re spread. Somewhat in the same regions, but but closer to customers.
Allen Hall: Well, you just recently celebrated 20 years with G. E. Vernova, which is remarkable. And you’re also expanding a facility down in Florida to another 20, 000 square feet.
What is your footprint right now in Florida alone?
Andreas Kipker: I’m a little bit in doubt, actually, the exact number. We’re around 100, 000 square foot in in, in, in Florida today of, um, of. on the roof. And then it’s a process that takes a bit of outdoors storage at outdoor space as well. So, the site itself is significantly bigger.
You will know this from blade manufacturing plants as well, that the parts are quite big. So it takes a little bit of storage around. But yeah, we’re super excited to have to have longstanding relationship with with several of our customers, but G we just we just reached this milestone.
Um, um, so yeah, proud of that.
Joel Saxum: I think it’s important to to talk about nacelles here, right? Like when you see, when you say when we’re in the wind world, where Alan and I touch most of the time, everybody in the large manufacturing space, you hear about gearbox manufacturers, bearing manufacturers, and then a few tower things here and there, but it’s mostly blades.
Everybody’s worried. You know, what’s TPI here? What’s Iris doing here? What’s, You know, LM doing here or how is that all working? But the part that’s like the most recognizable part on the whole turbine, the nacelle, it’s the box that holds the brains. It’s the thing that gets all of the work done inside of it.
We don’t talk about that much. And I think one of the reasons is there’s usually not very many issues with it, right?
Andreas Kipker: No, I would say we do not see a lot of issues. I think we could in, in all fairness, talk a little bit more about it because There’s a lot of safety features that allows our technicians, not our technicians, but the industry’s technicians to, to carry out their job safely is really important.
Things that we mount on on, on, on the nacelle. So yeah it, it deserves probably a little bit more face time in in a world where we where we expose our technicians to a lot of a lot of risks and we need to keep them safe from that.
Allen Hall: So let’s talk about the nacelle for a minute.
The nacelles are made out of. Basically fiberglass and foam is that how they’re constructed?
Andreas Kipker: Before I joined Jupyterbug, I worked in a company that supplies blade manufacturers. The materials that are being used here are very much the same. It’s slightly different densities of foam because it does less of a structural load than a blade, but yeah, we’re talking about.
Glass fibers, foams, and then the typical resin systems as well. And then surprisingly enough quite a bit of steel parts that are mounted on on that as well.
Allen Hall: So the approach from Jupiter. Box manufacturing, and I’ve seen some things on YouTube, which are quite interesting how you do this.
It is a resident fusion process, very similar to blades, but instead of making a, you know, a shell, you’re making these panels, but then it’s sort of a modular assembly, right?
Andreas Kipker: Different OEMs have different design philosophies, and we work with them on optimizing that. Some are focusing on the ease of the assembly plant, and some are focusing more on The flexibility in, in, in the supply chain.
So we see it going both ways. We do manufacture both parts that that are quite modular, but we do also manufacture a lot of parts that are quite significant in size and do not fit into a container in in, in any way. That that’s also why we have.
Regional setups and some setups that are, need to be closer to the customer so that we can assemble these containerized parts into something that’s easier to install for turbine for the OEM.
Allen Hall: Can we use GE as an example here? You’re manufacturing basic sub assemblies down in Pensacola, Florida, and then they’re moving them up to Schenectady, New York, which is nearby to me, and then you’re assembling them.
near the manufacturing facility that GE has established. Isn’t that the process?
Andreas Kipker: We have this plant down in Florida that makes actually fully fully assembled nacelles. It’s an oversized transport that goes down to the GE factory as well. When we talk about the parts in Schenectady, these are these are from a different design philosophy.
Where we manufacture them offshore. We sent them into Schenectady and then we mount them in Schenectady to to ease the assembly at the GE plant in Schenectady. So, so actually GE has I hope I’m not giving anything away here, but they will they use both design methodologies.
And you will see that if you see the the turbine up close.
Allen Hall: Quite amazing. Okay. So some of your OEMs, even internally to a single OEM asking for like a full completed. Nacelle, other ones want something that’s modular. That’s really fascinating. And on top of that, they’re asking you to install a bunch of a number of safety features and accessories to these nacelles that, there’s, it’s quite complicated now.
It used to be when, years ago, the nacelles tend to be really simple. Now they’ve figured out that they can add on a lot of features to the nacelles, right?
Andreas Kipker: And we see that as some of our value add here in trying to take these parts that can be mounted already in advance. That does not have to go into the assembly line at at the OEM facility.
And we try to take that over, prepare that, make it as easy as possible, mounting as much as we can on the covers. But then also, um, preparing kits. So they are, so they fit right for installation into the assembly line. So yeah, that, that’s an avenue that we have been trying to go.
Going down that road with a higher pace over the past two years. Um, so yeah we, we see the need in certain markets for that, for sure.
Joel Saxum: I like the approach because one of the things that you hear, whether you’re at an offshore conference, an onshore conference, or you’re talking to Anybody in development, it’s all about supply chain, right?
It’s like supply chain, building out local supply chain. How can we optimize the supply chain? Um, you know, like to the point where procurement, good procurement people in supply chain, people in wind are, they’re worth gold, right? But if, so you guys are taking on a bit of that front end work and alleviating the pressures from the OEMs to get it done themselves is what it sounds like.
Andreas Kipker: Absolutely. And, um, you’d say in a growth market that’s making a lot of sense, right? You, yeah, you go to less parts that you need to procure, less logistics that you need to worry about. And we step into that role as a partner.
Joel Saxum: Um, so Jupiter Buck sees that sees that I don’t want to say revenue, but let’s see that opportunity and just grabs, grabs it as well.
It’s a good place to be.
Andreas Kipker: We see it as a way of. servicing our customers much better. So, yes, it gives us more revenue, but it also, and I think more importantly for me, actually gives us an opportunity to move closer to the customer, to become more of a partner, enabling their their higher outputs.
And we see that especially in offshore today. As a need that to meet the growth of the next few years there’s a need for someone to step into that role. And we’re happy where we can take it that that we get that opportunity.
Joel Saxum: So let me ask you a question with staying in that supply chain procurement kind of mode, what drives or what drove the original decision and what drives the staying power to, to be in Pensacola?
Because when you think wind, you don’t think Pensacola, Florida. I guess, unless we’re talking about next era, we don’t talk about Florida that much, but why Pensacola? What’s attractive to that as a manufacturing center?
Andreas Kipker: There’s a very clear logic behind it. There’s a big G E Vanova manufacturing plant in Pensacola.
So, we are like five miles away from from that plant. And that’s the main reason why we we picked that place in the original space It started on a smaller scale and it’s been growing up to to now being um, one of our biggest plants. Um, so yeah, I’m I’m proud of that journey.
And with how we see the wind evolving in US for the next few years, we expect that that to continue. And that’s also why we’re building that out. Yeah. It’s because of proximity to to the market especially to GE that we’re in now.
Allen Hall: How much of the engineering is done by Jupyter box?
So when you’re working with an OEM say it’s Festus or Nord X or whatever you and you do work with those companies You’re pretty much everybody on the planet at the moment how much are they throwing over to you in terms of engineering saying? Here’s the shape, build it. We have
Andreas Kipker: some where we get a fully complete design that we take over.
And we, we just take that from a part design until how are we going to manufacture it. And we do only really process engineering on, on, on that. And there’s other parts where we come in very early in the stage. We do load calculations. We help with. Developing the manufacturing, um, taking design for manufacturing into the design.
So, so we, some places we step in very early, some places we step in very late and If I get an opportunity, we would like to step in early because that, that, that will, in the end we believe that we can save costs in, in, in such a setup. So,
Allen Hall: absolutely. It’s always a smart idea to bring the manufacturer of the component in early because you don’t realize where.
You can actually save on costs and improve the process time. And that’s one thing that JupyterBot has been very aggressive about. There’s been a number of changes I know you’ve implemented internally. You want to talk about some of the concepts and ideas that you’ve been implementing to make the nacelles more efficient and lower costs?
If
Andreas Kipker: we look at some of the some things we’ve done in the past, it has been focused on how to help standardize and improve performance. In, in an industry creating solutions that that we could work with across across the OEMs. If I look at where we are focusing right now, a lot of our focus is on internally, how do we prepare ourselves for the growth?
How do we prepare ourselves for standardization of processes? Um, so, so, While we’re of course working on some opportunities to help the industry grow outside, we, there’s a, quite a bit of focus on internally growing right now growing our readiness for the future. Yeah, for
Joel Saxum: the next few years.
So with that one being said, a question for you then, is the, where’s the majority of your bandwidth going right now? So is it, are you, we had some great conversations with a few OEMs in the last few weeks, and I know like GE say, we’ve been talking about GE a lot here. GE is shifting towards that. We’re going to make a workhorse and we’re going to, you know, we’re going to not have 300 models we can do.
And we’re going to get down to brass tacks here. So are you guys building a lot of those, like, um, the Cyprus, the 606. 1 nacelles or where’s most of your bandwidth right now? I would say
Andreas Kipker: where we focus right now on ramping up is certainly on supporting the Sierra ramp up in in, in, in US. The Sonsia project naturally takes a lot of attention these these months.
But second to that, we have we’ve had a steep ramp up over the past year in in in Europe, um, that that we will continue to see also coming into next year on, on offshore products. So there’s projects around the world that that are at different stages. Um, but I would say offshore in U.
S. is where we see. The biggest movements right right now.
Joel Saxum: What are, what do you guys do special to the marine bound nacelles? Is there special gaskets? Is there special close outs? So what are they, how are they different than the onshore ones in a general sense? It’s quite similar, right? Where
Andreas Kipker: we see the main difference is just the sheer size of it.
You see these parts that go on the road? Yes. And then you see these parts that are just too big to ever fit fit on the highway. So, I, that, that’s the first real impression you get when you get close to this. You think, wow, that’s a big part. And then you realize it’s only it’s only one back end corner of of the full nacelle that we’re looking at here.
So that’s number one, right? But to, to your point, no, where we see the bigger, the difference on offshore is actually on, um, coating of the steel that go out there. Right. It’s a pretty tough environment that we ship these parts into. So, that’s where the biggest difference is.
Joel Saxum: Always a focus offshore coatings because if you have one little nick in the coating like it’s gonna be a month before that’s Rusting and showing and all kinds of stuff. That’s why I’ve seen RFPs for offshore projects And maybe our listeners have never seen this before but when they do offshore projects There’s an RFP right before, or that goes out to all kinds of people, that right before commissioning, they bring in people just to touch up paint.
And these are people on ropes, and they’re going up and down the towers, everywhere around that thing, because there cannot be any exposed metal. There cannot be any nicks, dents, anything that happened in, you know, transportation or anything like that. So yeah, coatings. Definitely huge offshore. What I want to, what I’m thinking about right now is, um, when GE originally put the hate, they had the first kind of press releases about the Heliad X platform, and they showed that in a cell and it was like rolling out of a factory door and there was a bunch of people standing around it.
And it is literally the size of like a three story home. Like it, it’s massive.
Andreas Kipker: It is very big. Um, no but I would like to come back to Joel you have a good point here in that there’s a lot of repair jobs that are being done to make sure that it fits in the end. Right. That’s on us as an industry to help also design solutions that do not need that extra service and attention.
Now while your business might appreciate that I would say for us. We appreciate if we can take some of these parts and we can convert them into composites instead, because then corrosion doesn’t, it’s not a problem, right? So, so we see some parts where we actually do change it into corrosion to avoid issues.
Joel Saxum: Smart. I like that. I like, I think that’s great as an, as a lifetime O& M cost saver. Convert steel parts into composites if you can, because then you don’t have to deal with rust and that kind of stuff. That’s smart. It
Andreas Kipker: of course depends on what we’re talking about. We’re not going to make a tower out of composites.
Right. But there are a lot of parts that can be converted into composites up tower.
Allen Hall: Well, that’s why it’s important for OEMs to talk to Jupiter Bach early in the process to get those details figured out. It saves yourself a tremendous amount of money and time, and Jupiter Bach clearly has the advantage there.
And let’s talk about the end of life, the recycling efforts that are going on across the world at the minute. I mean, the United States is a big proponent of recycling. You are already thinking about that and have some ideas about The nacelle and the spinner itself, those are composite structures that have a lot of useful life in them.
What’s the future there?
Andreas Kipker: Let’s say today when you design and when our customers design a new turbine, they’re talking about a lifetime of more than 30 years on, on, on average, right? As a useful lifetime. Um, the composites that that we deliver for the vast majority, if not all of it has a lifetime that extends well beyond that with with what it’s the conditions that it’s in.
So, we have looked at different avenues we’re both looking at end of life solutions that, um, where we where we follow some of the solutions that the blade manufacturers has been following, right? We see with a lot of interest into projects like decom blades. Um, there’s other avenues as well.
When we get more com more, more standardized panels back, it’s easier to find a way to use them to, to build new stuff when it comes back. Um, so that was part of our, um, our thoughts into a design concept as well. We do not have the full solution to all of these problems, but we see that the parts that we’re making today certainly certainly has a very long lead time.
Oh, lifetime, sorry. We can find other uses for it at the end of at the end of the current life.
Allen Hall: What is the future for JupyterBock? You seem very busy at the moment and wind is growing faster than ever. What’s what’s going to happen over the next year or two for JupyterBock?
Andreas Kipker: I’m the super happy version of myself here today because right now things are quite positive.
Let’s see how it evolves. But as we see it right now, focus remains on ramping up with the U. S. market, barring any big changes. We expect that to continue for the next for the next two or three years and then find a good stable level after that, um, and then offshore. I know we talked about Offshore being being on a ramp up for already more than a year, but that’s continuing, right?
That’s, um, we’re still at the very early stage of of the volumes that Offshore should be able to deliver. Now here, it’s all dependent on on the markets coming together and making sure that the projects are delivered and not do not end up Um, being canceled again. But if we look at the opportunities, yeah, offshore is where we where we still see a lot of growth potential also going forward.
So, and stepping into this assembly partnerships with with our customers assembly means a lot of different things. I mean, for me, it’s making their Nacelle manufacturing assembly easier by by delivering larger parts of that.
Allen Hall: Well, the next time you’re down in Pensacola, Florida, we need to come down and visit you.
I would love to see your facility, because I think you’re doing remarkable things, and the scale of nacelles and even spinners is remarkable, and it’s hard to even envision some of these things. And Jupiter Bach is poised for big growth. Andreas, it’s been Remarkable having you on the podcast. I’ve learned a ton.
I know we talked a lot off here. I’ve learned a tremendous amount and, you know, and the best of luck to you over the new year. It’s gonna be a fantastic 2025 for you, I think.
Andreas Kipker: I hope it is for us and for the entire industry here. Right. That, that’s what that’s what we all need.
So it’s been it’s been a joy chatting here about, about wind and about the passions that we have. So thank you very much for for this opportunity. And I hope have a great time coming forward as
well.
https://weatherguardwind.com/jupiter-bach-nacelle/
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Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre
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Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre
Allen visits the Faskally Safety Leadership Centre with Mark Patterson, Director of Safety, Health, and Environment at SSE, and Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-Founder of Active Training Team. They discuss how SSE has put over 9,000 employees and 2,000 contract partners through ATT’s innovative training program, which uses actors and realistic scenarios to create lasting behavioral change across the entire workforce chain, from executives to technicians. Reach out to SSE and ATT to learn more!
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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Mark and Turnt. Welcome to the show. Thank you.
Mark Patterson: Thank you.
Allen Hall: We’re in Scotland, present Scotland and per Scotland, which is a place most people probably haven’t ventured to in the United States, but it is quite lovely, although chilly and rainy. It’s Scotland. We’re in December. Uh, and we’re here to take a look at the SSE Training Center.
And the remarkable things that active training team is doing here, because we had seen this in Boston in a smaller format, uh, about a year ago almost now.
Dermot Kerrigan: Just Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah. Six months
Dermot Kerrigan: ago.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It hasn’t been that long ago. Uh, but IC was on me to say, you gotta come over. You gotta come over. You gotta see the, the whole, uh, environment where we put you into the police room and some of the things we wanna talk about, uh, because it, [00:01:00] it does play different.
And you’re right, it does play different. It is very impactful. And it, and maybe we should start off first of Mark, you’re the head of basically health and safety and environment for SSE here in Perth. This is a remarkable facility. It is unlike anything I have seen in the States by far. And SSE has made the commitment to do this sort of training for.
Everybody in your employment and outside of your employment, even contractors.
Mark Patterson: We have been looking at some quite basic things in safety as everybody does. And there’s a fundamental thing we want to do is get everybody home safe. And uh, it’s easier said than done because you’ve gotta get it right for every single task, every single day.
And that’s a massive challenge. And we have like 15,000. 15,000 people in SSE, we probably work with about 50,000 contract [00:02:00] partners and we’re heavily dependent, uh, on get our contract partners to get our activities done. And they’re crucial.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Mark Patterson: And in that it’s one community and we need to make sure everybody there gets home safe.
And that’s what drove us to think about adding more rules isn’t gonna do it. Um, you need to give people that sense of a feeling, uh, when a really serious sense of cars and then equip them with tools to, to deal with it. So. We’ve all probably seen training that gives that sense of doom and dread when something goes badly wrong, but actually that needs to be.
Coupled with something which is quite powerful, is what are the tools that help people have the conversations that gets everybody home safe. So kind of trying to do two things.
Allen Hall: Well, SSC is involved in a number of large projects. You have three offshore wind farms, about a more than a thousand turbines right now.
Wind turbines onshore, offshore, and those offshore projects are not easy. There’s a lot of complexity to them.
Mark Patterson: Absolutely. So look, I I think [00:03:00] that’s, that’s something that. You’ve gotta partner with the right people. If you wanna be successful, you need to make it easy for people to do the right thing. Yeah, as best you possibly can.
You need to partner with the right people, and you need to get people that you need to have a sense that you need to keep checking that as you’re growing your business. The chinks in your armor don’t grow too. But fundamentally there’s something else, which is a sense of community. When people come together to, to do a task, there is a sense of community and people work, put a lot of discretionary effort into to get, uh, big projects done.
And in that, um, it’s a sense of community and you wanna make sure everybody there gets home safe to their friends and family. ’cause if we’re all being honest about it, you know, SSE is a brilliant company. What we do is absolutely worth doing. I love SC. But I love my family a fair amount more. And if you bought into that, you probably bought into the strategy that we’re trying to adopt in terms of safety.
Uh, it’s really simple messaging. Um,
Allen Hall: yeah. That, that is very clear. Yeah. And it should be [00:04:00]well communicated outside of SSEI hope because it is a tremendous, uh, value to SSE to do that. And I’m sure the employees appreciate it because you have a culture of safety. What. Trigger that. How long ago was that trigger?
Is this, this is not something you thought up yesterday for sure.
Mark Patterson: No, look, this, the, the, what we’ve done in the immersive training center, um, really reinforces a lot of things that we’ve had in place for a while, and it, it takes it to the, the next level. So we’ve been working probably more than 10 years, but, uh, certainly the.
Seven years we’ve been talking very much about our safety family, that’s the community and SSE with our contract partners and what we need to do. And part of that is really clear language about getting people home safe. Uh, a sense that you’ve, everybody in it that works with us has a safety license. And that license is, if it’s not safe, we don’t do it.
It’s not a rural based thing. It’s how we roll. It’s part of the culture. We’d, we, uh, have a culture where, and certainly trying to instill for everybody a culture. Where [00:05:00] they’ve got that license. If, if they think something’s not right, we’ll stop the job and get it right. And even if they’re wrong, we’ll still listen to them because ultimately we need to work our way through, right?
So we’ve been, we’ve thought hard about the language we wanted to use to reinforce that. So the importance of plan, scan and adapt. So planning our work well, thinking through what we need to do. Not just stopping there though, keeping scanning for what could go wrong. That sense that you can’t remember everything.
So you need to have immediate corrective actions and that immediate sort of see it, sort of report it. If you see something that isn’t right, do something about it. And that sense of community caring for the community that you work with. And those are the essence of our, our language on safety and the immersive training.
Uh, is not trying to shove that language down everybody’s throats again, particularly our contract partners, but it’s, it’s helping people see some really clear things. One is if a [00:06:00] really serious incident occurs at what, what it feels like here. And I’ve spent a lot of time in various industries and people are different when they’ve been on a site or involved when there’s been a really serious incident and you need to do something to.
Get that sense of a feeling of what it feels like and actually make people feel slightly uncomfortable in the process. ’cause that’s part of it,
Allen Hall: right? Yes.
Mark Patterson: Because you know,
Allen Hall: you remember that.
Mark Patterson: You remember that. Yeah. We’ve had, you know, we’ve had people say, well, I felt very uncomfortable in that bit of the training.
It was okay. But was, I felt very uncomfortable. And you know, we’ve talked about that a lot.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Mark Patterson: We know you kinda should because if there’s something wrong with you, if you don’t feel uncomfortable about that. But what’s super powerful on the guys in at TT do brilliantly. Is have facilitators that allow you to have that conversation and understand what do you need to do differently?
How do you influence somebody who’s more senior? How do you, how do you bring people with you so that they’re gonna [00:07:00] do what you want ’em to do after you’ve left the building? And. Just pointing the finger at people and shouting at them. Never does that. Right? Uh, rarely does that. You’ve gotta get that sense of how do you get people to have a common belief?
And,
Allen Hall: and I think that’s important in the way that SSE addresses that, is that you’re not just addressing technicians, it’s the whole chain. It’s everybody is involved in this action. And you can break the link anywhere in there. I wanna get through the description of why that. Process went through ATTs head to go.
We need to broaden the scope a little bit. We need to think about the full chain from the lowest entry worker just getting started to the career senior executive. Why chain them all together? Why put them in the same room together? Yeah. Why do you do that?
Dermot Kerrigan: Well, behavioral safety or behavioral base safety kind of got a bad rep because it was all about.
If we could just [00:08:00] make those guys at the front line behave themselves,
Allen Hall: then everything’s fine,
Dermot Kerrigan: then everything’s fine.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Dermot Kerrigan: But actually that’s kind of a, the wrong way of thinking. It didn’t work. I, I think,
Allen Hall: yeah, it didn’t work.
Dermot Kerrigan: What the mess, the central message we’re trying to get across is that actually operational safety is not just the business of operational people.
It’s everybody’s business.
Allen Hall: Right.
Dermot Kerrigan: You know? Um, and. Yeah, everybody has a role to p play in that, you know? Right. So site based teams, back office support functions, everybody has a role to play. And, you know, there’s a strand in, in this scenario where, uh, an incident takes place because people haven’t been issued with the right piece of equipment.
Which is a lifting cage.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Dermot Kerrigan: And there’s a whole story about that, which goes through a procurement decision made somewhere where somebody hit a computer and a computer said no because they’d asked for too many lifting cages when they, somebody could have said, you’ve asked for five lifting cages, it’s takes you over the procurement cap.
Would four do it? [00:09:00] Yes, that would be fine. That would be fine. Yeah. As it is, they come to a crucial piece of operation. This incr this, you know, this crucial piece of kit simply isn’t there. So in order to hit the deadline and try and make people happy, two ordinary guys, two technicians, put two and two together, make five, and, and one of them gets killed, you know?
Yeah. So it’s, we’re, we’re trying to show that, that this isn’t just operational people. It’s everybody’s business.
Mark Patterson: Well, that’s why we worked with you in this, because, um, we saw. Why you got it in terms of that chain? Um, so in, in the scenario, it’s very clear there’s a senior exec talking to the client and actually as SSE.
We’re sometimes that client, we’ve got big principal contractors that are doing our big construction activities. We’ve got a lot in renewables and onshore and offshore wind obviously, but, and the transmission business and in thermal, so, uh, and distribution. So I’ll list all our businesses and including customer’s business, but we’ve got some big project activities where we’re the client sometime we’re the principal contractor [00:10:00] ourselves.
And we need to recognize that in each chain, each link in that chain, there’s a risk that we say the wrong thing, put the wrong pressure on. And I think what’s really helpful is we have in the center that sort of philosophy here that we get everybody in together mixed up. Probably at least half of our board have done this.
Our executive team have all done this. Um, people are committed to it at that level, and they’re here like everybody else sitting, waiting for this thing to start. Not being quite sure what they’re gonna go through in the day. Um, and it’s actually really important you’ve got a chief exec sitting with somebody who’s, um, a scaffolder.
That’s really important. ’cause the scaffolder is probably the more likely person to get hurt rather than chief exec. So actually everybody seeing what it’s like and the pressures that are under at each level is really important.
Allen Hall: SSC is such a good example for the industry. I watched you from outside in America for a long time and you just watch the things that happened.
[00:11:00] Here you go. Wow. Okay. SSC is organized. They know what they’re doing, they understand what the project is, they’re going about it. Mm-hmm. Nothing is perfect, but I, I think when we watch from the United States, we see, oh, there’s order to it. There’s a reason they’re doing these things. They’re, they’re measuring what is happening.
And I think that’s one of the things about at t is the results. Have been remarkable, not just here, but in several different sites, because a TT touches a lot of massive infrastructure projects in the uk and the success rate has been tremendous. Remember? You wanna just briefly talk about that?
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. But we, we run a number of centers.
We also run mobile programs, which you got from having seen us in the States. Um, but the first, uh, center that we, we, we opened was, was called. Epic, which stood for Employers Project Induction Center, and that was the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project, which is now more or less finished. It’s completed. And that was a 10 year project, 5 billion pounds.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Dermot Kerrigan: Um, [00:12:00] and you know, unfortunately the fact is on, on that kind of project, you would normally expect to hurt a number of people, sometimes fatally. That would be the expectation.
Allen Hall: Right. It’s a complicated
Dermot Kerrigan: project, statistic underground. So, you know, we, and, and of course Tide, we are very, very. Very pleased that, uh, in that 10 year span, they didn’t even have one, uh, serious life-changing injury, uh, let alone a fatality.
Um, so you know that that’s, and I’m I’m not saying that what ATTs work, uh, what we do is, is, is, is directly responsible for that, but certainly Epic, they would say Tideway was the cornerstone for the safety practices, very good safety practices that they, they put out. Uh, on that project, again, as a cultural piece to do with great facilities, great leadership on the part of the, of the, of the executive teams, et cetera, and stability.
It was the same ex executive team throughout that whole project, which is quite unusual.
Allen Hall: No.
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. [00:13:00] Um, so yeah, it, it, it seems to work, you know, uh, always in safety that the, the, the, the tricky thing is trying to prove something works because it hasn’t happened. You know?
Allen Hall: Right, right. Uh, prove the negative.
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. Um,
Allen Hall: but in safety, that’s what you want to have happen. You, you do know, not want an outcome.
Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely not.
Allen Hall: No reports, nothing.
Dermot Kerrigan: No. So, you know, you have to give credit to, to organizations. Organizations like SSE. Oh, absolutely. And projects like Tideway and Sted, uh, on their horn projects. Who, who have gone down this, frankly, very left field, uh, route.
We we’re, you know, it is only in the last 10 years that we’ve been doing this kind of thing, and it hasn’t, I mean, you know, Tideway certainly is now showing some results. Sure. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it, it wasn’t by any means a proven way of, of, of dealing with safety. So
Mark Patterson: I don’t think you could ever prove it.
Dermot Kerrigan: No.
Mark Patterson: And actually there’s, there’s something [00:14:00]fundamentally of. It, it kind of puts a stamp on the culture that you want, either you talked about the projects in SSE, we’ve, we’ve done it for all of our operational activities, so we’ve had about 9,000 people through it for SSE and so far about 2000 contract partners.
Um, we’re absolutely shifting our focus now. We’ve got probably 80% of our operational teams have been through this in each one of our businesses, and, uh, we. We probably are kind of closing the gaps at the moment, so I was in Ireland with. I here guys last week, um, doing a, a mobile session because logistically it was kind of hard to come to Perth or to one of the other centers, but we’re, we’re gradually getting up to that 80%, uh, for SSE colleagues and our focus is shifting a bit more to contract partners and making sure they get through.
And look, they are super positive about this. Some of them have done that themselves and worked with a TT in the past, so they’re. Really keen to, to use the center that we have [00:15:00] here in Perth, uh, for their activities. So when, when they’re working with us, we kind of work together to, to make that happen. Um, but they can book that separately with you guys.
Yeah. Uh, in, in the, uh, Fastly Center too.
Allen Hall: I think we should describe the room that we’re in right now and why this was built. This is one of three different scenes that, that each of the. Students will go through to put some realism to the scenario and the scenario, uh, a worker gets killed. This is that worker’s home?
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. So each of the spaces that we have here that, that they denote antecedents or consequences, and this is very much consequences. Um, so the, the, the participants will be shown in here, uh, as they go around the center, uh, and there’s a scene that takes place where they meet the grown up daughter of the young fella who’s been right, who’s been, who’s been tragically killed.
Uh, and she basically asks him, uh, asks [00:16:00] them what happened. And kind of crucially this as a subtext, why didn’t you do something about it?
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Dermot Kerrigan: Because you were there,
Allen Hall: you saw it, why it was played out in front of you. You saw, you
Dermot Kerrigan: saw what happened. You saw this guy who was obviously fast asleep in the canteen.
He was exhausted. Probably not fit for work. Um, and yet being instructed to go back out there and finish the job, um, with all the tragic consequences that happen,
Allen Hall: right?
Dermot Kerrigan: But it’s important to say, as Mark says, that. It’s not all doom and gloom. The first part of the day is all about showing them consequences.
Allen Hall: Sure. It’s
Dermot Kerrigan: saying it’s a,
Allen Hall: it’s a Greek tragedy
Dermot Kerrigan: in
Allen Hall: some
Dermot Kerrigan: ways, but then saying this doesn’t have to happen. If you just very subtly influence other people’s behavior, it’s
Allen Hall: slight
Dermot Kerrigan: by thinking about how you behave and sure adapting your behavior accordingly, you can completely change the outcome. Uh, so long as I can figure out where you are coming from and where that behavior is coming from, I might be able to influence it,
Allen Hall: right.
Dermot Kerrigan: And if I can, then I can stop that [00:17:00] hap from happening. And sure enough, at the end of the day, um, the last scene is that the, the, the daughter that we see in here growing up and then going back into this tragic, uh, ending, uh. She’s with her dad, then it turned out he was the one behind the camera all along.
So he’s 45 years old, she’s just passed the driving test and nobody got her 21 years ago. You know,
Mark Patterson: I think there, there is, there’s a journey that you’ve gotta take people through to get to believe that. And kind of part of that journey is as, as we look around this room, um, no matter who it is, and we’ve talked to a lot of people, they’ll be looking at things in this room and think, well, yeah, I’ve got a cup like that.
And yes. Yeah. When my kids were, we, we had. That play toy for the kids. Yes. So there is something that immediately hooks people and children hook
Allen Hall: people.
Mark Patterson: Absolutely. And
Allen Hall: yes,
Mark Patterson: they get to see that and understand that this is, this is, this is, could be a real thing. And also in the work site, uh, view, there’s kind of a work site, there’s a kind of a boardroom type thing [00:18:00] and you can actually see, yeah, that’s what it kind of feels like.
The work sites a little bit. You know, there’s scuffs in the, on the line, on the floor because that’s what happens in work sites and there’s a sense of realism for all of this, uh, is really important.
Allen Hall: The realism is all the way down to the outfits that everybody’s worn, so they’re not clean safety gear.
It’s. Dirty, worn safety gear, which is what it should be. ’cause if you’re working, that’s what it should look like. And it feels immediately real that the, the whole stage is set in a, in the canteen, I’ll call it, I don’t know, what do you call the welfare area? Yeah. Okay.
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. Uh, wanna use the right language here.
But, uh, in the states we call it a, a break room. Uh, so you’re sitting in the break room just minding your own business and boom. An actor walks in, in full safety gear, uh, speaking Scottish very quickly, foreign American. But it’s real.
Mark Patterson: I think
Allen Hall: it feels real because you, you, I’ve been in those situations, I’ve seen that that break the,
Mark Patterson: the language is real and, uh, [00:19:00] perhaps not all, uh, completely podcast suitable.
Um, but when you look at it, the feedback we’ve got from, from people who are closer to the tools and at all levels, in fact is, yeah. This feels real. It’s a credible scenario and uh, you get people who. I do not want to be in a safety training for an entire day. Um, and they’re saying arms folded at the start of the day and within a very short period of time, they are absolutely watching what the heck’s going on here.
Yes. To understand what’s happening, what’s going on. I don’t understand. And actually it’s exactly as you say, those subtle things that you, not just giving people that experience, but the subtle things you can nudge people on to. There’s some great examples of how do you nudge people, how do you give feedback?
And we had some real examples where people have come back to us and said even things to do with their home life. We were down in London one day, um, and I was sitting in on the training and one of the guys said, God, you’ve just taught me something about how I can give feedback to people in a really impactful [00:20:00] way.
So you, so you explain the behavior you see, which is just the truth of what the behavior is. This is what I saw you do, this is what happened, but actually the impact that that has. How that individual feels about it. And the example that they used was, it was something to do with their son and how their son was behaving and interacting.
And he said, do you know what? I’ve struggled to get my son to toe the line to, to look after his mom in the right way. I’m gonna stop on the way home and I’m gonna have a conversation with him. And I think if I. Keep yourself cool and calm and go through those steps. I think I can have a completely different conversation.
And that was a great example. Nothing to do with work, but it made a big difference to that guy. But all those work conversations where you could just subtly change your tone. Wind yourself back, stay cool and calm and do something slightly different. And I think that those, those things absolutely make a difference,
Allen Hall: which is hard to do in the moment.
I think that’s what the a TT training does make you think of the re the first reaction, [00:21:00] which is the impulsive reaction. We gotta get this job done. This has gotta be done. Now I don’t have the right safety gear. We’ll, we’ll just do it anyway to, alright, slow. Just take a breather for a second. Think about what the consequences of this is.
And is it worth it at the end of the day? Is it worth it? And I think that’s the, the reaction you want to draw out of people. But it’s hard to do that in a video presentation or
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Those things just
Dermot Kerrigan: don’t need to practice.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It doesn’t stick in your brain.
Dermot Kerrigan: You need to give it a go And to see, right.
To see how to see it happen. And, and the actors are very good. They’re good if they, you know. What, whatever you give them, they will react to.
Mark Patterson: They do. That’s one of the really powerful things. You’ve got the incident itself, then you’ve got the UNP of what happened, and then you’ve got specific, uh, tools and techniques and what’s really good is.
Even people who are not wildly enthusiastic at the start of the day of getting, being interactive in, in, in a session, they do throw themselves into it ’cause they recognize they’ve been through [00:22:00] something. It’s a common sense of community in the room.
Dermot Kerrigan: Right.
Mark Patterson: And they have a bit of fun with it. And it is fun.
Yeah. You know, people say they enjoy the day. Um, they, they, they recognize that it’s challenged them a little bit and they kinda like that, but they also get the opportunity to test themselves. And that testing is really important in terms of, sure. Well, how do you challenge somebody you don’t know and you just walking past and you see something?
How do you have that conversation in a way that just gets to that adult To adult communication? Yeah. And actually gets the results that you need. And being high handed about it and saying, well, those are the rules, or, I’m really important, just do it. That doesn’t give us a sustained improvement.
Dermot Kerrigan: PE people are frightened of failure, you know?
Sure. They’re frightened of getting things wrong, so give ’em a space where they, where actually just fall flat in your face. Come back up again and try again. You know, give it a go. And, because no one’s, this is a safe space, you know, unlike in the real world,
Allen Hall: right?
Dermot Kerrigan: This is as near to the real world as you want to get.
It’s pretty real. It’s safe, you know, uh, it’s that Samuel Beckett thing, you know, fail again, [00:23:00] fail better,
Allen Hall: right?
Mark Patterson: But there’s, there’s a really good thing actually because people, when they practice that they realize. Yeah, it’s not straightforward going up and having a conversation with somebody about something they’re doing that could be done better.
And actually that helps in a way because it probably makes people a little bit more generous when somebody challenges them on how they’re approaching something. Even if somebody challenges you in a bit of a cat handed way, um, then you can just probably take a breath and think this. This, this guy’s probably just trying to have a conversation with me,
Allen Hall: right.
Mark Patterson: So that I get home to my family.
Allen Hall: Right.
Mark Patterson: It’s hard to get annoyed when you get that mindset. Mindset
Allen Hall: someone’s looking after you just a little bit. Yeah. It does feel nice.
Mark Patterson: And, and even if they’re not doing it in the best way, you need to be generous with it. So there’s, there’s good learnings actually from both sides of the, the, the interaction.
Allen Hall: So what’s next for SSE and at t? You’ve put so many people through this project in, in the program and it has. Drawn great results.
Mark Patterson: Yeah.
Allen Hall: [00:24:00] How do you, what do you think of next?
Mark Patterson: So what’s next? Yeah, I guess, uh, probably the best is next to come. Next to come. We, I think there’s a lot more that we can do with this.
So part of what we’ve done here is establish with a big community of people, a common sense of what we’re doing. And I think we’ve got an opportunity to continue with that. We’ve got, um, fortunate to be in a position where we’ve got a good level of growth in the business.
Allen Hall: Yes,
Mark Patterson: we do. Um, there’s a lot going on and so there’s always a flow of new people into an organization, and if people, you know, the theory of this stuff better than I do, would say that you need to maintain a, a sense of community that’s kind of more than 80%.
If you want a certain group of people to act in a certain way, you need about 80% of the people plus to act in that way, and then it’ll sustain. But if it starts. To drift so that only 20% of people are acting a certain way, then that is gonna ex extinguish that elements of the culture. So we need to keep topping up our Sure, okay.
Our, our [00:25:00] immersive training with people, and we’re also then thinking about the contract partners that we have and also leaving a bit of a legacy. For the communities in Scotland, because we’ve got a center that we’re gonna be using a little bit less because we’ve fortunate to get the bulk of our people in SSE through, uh, we’re working with contract partners.
They probably want to use it for. For their own purposes and also other community groups. So we’ve had all kinds of people from all these different companies here. We’ve had the Scottish first Minister here, we’ve had loads of people who’ve been really quite interested to see what we’re doing. And as a result of that, they’ve started to, uh, to, to step their way through doing something different themselves.
So,
Allen Hall: so that may change the, the future of at t also. And in terms of the slight approach, the scenarios they’re in. The culture changes, right? Yeah. Everybody changes. You don’t wanna be stuck in time.
Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely.
Allen Hall: That’s one thing at t is not,
Dermot Kerrigan: no, it’s not
Allen Hall: stuck in time.
Dermot Kerrigan: But, uh, I mean, you know, we first started out with the centers, uh, accommodating project.
Yeah. So this would [00:26:00] be an induction space. You might have guys who were gonna work on a project for two weeks, other guys who were gonna work on it for six months. They wanted to put them through the same experience. Mm. So that when they weren’t on site. That they could say, refer back to the, the, the, the induction and say, well, why ask me to do that?
You know, we, we, we both have that experience, so I’m gonna challenge you and you’re gonna accept challenge, et cetera. So it was always gonna be a short, sharp shock. But actually, if you’re working with an organization, you don’t necessarily have to take that approach. You could put people through a little bit of, of, of, of the training, give ’em a chance to practice, give ’em a chance to reflect, and then go on to the next stage.
Um. So it, it becomes more of a, a journey rather than a single hard, a single event experience. Yeah. You don’t learn to drive in a day really, do you? You know, you have to, well, I do transfer it to your right brain and practice, you know?
Allen Hall: Right. The more times you see an experience that the more it’s memorable and especially with the, the training on how to work with others.[00:27:00]
A refresh of that is always good.
Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Pressure changes people and I think it’s always time to reflect and go back to what the culture is of SSE That’s important. So this, this has been fantastic and I, I have to. Thank SSC and a TT for allowing us to be here today. It was quite the journey to get here, but it’s been really enlightening.
Uh, and I, I think we’ve been an advocate of a TT and the training techniques that SSC uses. For well over a year. And everybody we run into, and in organizations, particularly in win, we say, you, you gotta call a TT, you gotta reach out because they’re doing things right. They’re gonna change your safety culture, they’re gonna change the way you work as an organization.
That takes time. That message takes time. But I do think they need to be reaching out and dermo. How do they do that? How do, how do they reach att?
Dermot Kerrigan: Uh, they contact me or they contact att. So info at Active Trading Team, us.
Allen Hall: Us. [00:28:00] There you go.
Dermot Kerrigan: or.co uk. There you go. If you’re on the other side of the pond. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yes. And Mark, because you just established such a successful safety program, I’m sure people want to reach out and ask, and hopefully a lot of our US and Australian and Canadian to listen to this podcast. We’ll reach out and, and talk to you about how, what you have set up here, how do they get ahold of you?
Mark Patterson: I’ll give you a link that you can access in the podcast, if that. Great. And uh, look. The, the risk of putting yourself out there and talking about this sort of thing is you sometimes give the impression you’ve got everything sorted and we certainly don’t in SSE. And if the second you think you’ve got everything nailed in terms of safety in your approach, then, then you don’t.
Um, so we’ve got a lot left to do. Um, but I think this particular thing has made a difference to our colleagues and, and contract partners and just getting them home safe.
Allen Hall: Yes. Yes, so thank you. Just both of you. Mark Dermott, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate both [00:29:00] of you and yeah, I’d love to attend this again, this is.
Excellent, excellent training. Thanks, Alan. Thanks.
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