PowerCurve’s Innovative Performance Analysis
Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of Denmark-based Power Curve, discusses how advanced blade scanning, aerodynamic upgrades, and the AeroVista tool are transforming wind turbine performance analysis. PowerCurve helps operators use real data to maximize AEP and make smarter decisions about blade maintenance and upgrades.
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Allen Hall: Nicholas, welcome back to the podcast. Hi. Thanks Allen. Good to see you again. There’s a lot going on in wind right now. Obviously the elections that happy the United States are changing the way that a lot of US based operators are thinking about their turbines and, and particularly their blades.
I’ve noticed over the last, even just couple of weeks that. Operators and the engineers are paying more attention to what they’re actually getting on site.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Instead of, uh, the sort of the full service agreement where, hey, they’re under warranty for two years, I don’t really need to do anything for a little while approach.
That’s changing into, I want to know what arrives on site, what am I getting and what problems are there with these particular blades that I may not know about because they’re new to me. Even though these blades, there may be thousands of these blades out in service. Mm-hmm. Me, my company doesn’t know.
Yep. How they operate. How they perform, particularly at this, this new site, I’m Repowering or, [00:01:00] or building new. That is a complete shift. From where it was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Yeah. And I think the biggest performance piece that people are looking at is aerodynamics, and I’m trying to understand how these blades perform, how they move.
Yes. What kind of loads there are, what kind I expect over the next year or two. And I think they’re just becoming now aware of maybe I need to have a game plan.
Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: And I, and that’s where power curve comes in, is like in the sense of have a king plan. Understand what these plates are all about. Yeah, yeah.
And try to characterize ’em early rather than later.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s been an increased focus on, on data and for operators, as you say, to understand more what they’re getting and not necessarily relying on just what they’re told. So, uh, I think a nice case study of that is last year we were helping a customer to build a, a digital twin.
Uh, of one of their turbine models that they, that they purchased. So what that involved [00:02:00] is, uh, going to site, doing a laser scan of a blade, understanding geometry, helping them to build up some aerodynamic and structural models of that blade. So then that customer was going to build an AEL model themselves of that turbine so that they could run load calculations.
They could look at, uh, site specific, uh, changes that could be relevant to that turbine’s configuration or how they operated it. And this isn’t really something that you saw a lot of, uh, a few years ago, but I think it’s great that operators, particularly when they have a larger engineering capacity, are starting to get into that game.
Uh, and it’s tough because it’s a lot of what the OEMs do, it’s their kind of specialist knowledge, but there’s a lot of smart people out there. Uh, there’s a lot of companies you can work with to help gather that data and build these products up.
Allen Hall: The OEMs right now are. Lowering the number of engineers.
Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Staff reductions. Yeah. Uh, so getting a hold of somebody on the engineering staff, particularly with aerodynamics, can be quite hard. Yes. And in fact, I’ve talked to [00:03:00] some smaller operators that can’t get access to those people at all.
Nicholas Gaudern: No, no. We, we get told that a lot that, um, there’s, there’s customers calling OEMs and they, yeah.
They can’t, they can’t speak to anyone who really understands that the issues that they’re facing. But free now we, we have contact with a lot of OEMs. I would say that we have more aerodynamicists and power curve than some OEMs have now. Oh, that’s true. And that’s quite, that’s true. Surprising. You know.
Um, so it does mean that I think from a customer support perspective, it is harder for the OEMs to take on some of those really detailed or nuanced questions that an operator may have.
Allen Hall: Right. Operators are getting smarter.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: And asking more pointed questions, not generic questions anymore. Uh, we’ve had, uh, junker on the podcast and I, when I ran into her last summer, she was basically saying that like you, you’re talking to operators now that are getting smarter about what they’re doing.
Yes. They’re asking more pointed questions. The OEMs can’t respond. So now what do you do? Yeah, that’s, that’s the Global Blade Group.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: [00:04:00] Perspective, right? Where everybody’s starting to pool the resources together. I think that’s an
Nicholas Gaudern: absolutely great initiative. I mean, it’s something that’s been going along in various forms for a few years now, but um, now big it has joined Stack rt.
It’s kind of been relaunched in, in this new form that you were discussing with us. So, um, we are really excited to be part of that, I think kind of the way, uh. Our role sits within the group. We’re still working on, on the details, but we’re definitely gonna be part of that group in helping to, to share knowledge.
So the aim is that we will help, uh, educate basically to, to raise discussion points, to, to lead forums with operators about how they can understand their aerodynamics better, how they can ask more relevant questions of the OEM. So I think that’s what a lot this is about, just asking the right questions.
I think sometimes operators can feel a little bit, uh, blind. Uh, as to the best way to navigate a problem, but by knowledge sharing within the Blades group with other forums, um, I think that’s gonna make that a lot easier for everyone.
Allen Hall: And you’ve been tapped as [00:05:00] the lead of the aerodynamics group within the Global Blade
Nicholas Gaudern: Group?
Yes. Yep, yep, that’s, that’s correct. Um, we haven’t had a, a kickoff yet as such, but that will hopefully happen in the next couple of months. But yeah, the idea is that power curve will kind of. Lead that knowledge sharing around the aerodynamic subject.
Allen Hall: Yes. So if you haven’t joined the Global Blade Group, it’s free.
Yep. If you work for an operator, you can just join it and you should. So get somebody on your staff to sign up to get ahold of Burger and get going with that, because then you can tap into all the resources that they have. Them being, uh, the most recent one is the leading edge protection campaign that was just summarized, uh, a couple of weeks ago.
So that data set is out there and you want to have access to that. Mm-hmm. But I think more importantly, as the group goes forward now and has been emboldened again, the aerodynamic piece is the missing link for most operators. Yeah, it is.
Nicholas Gaudern: And it’s, it’s often an area that is, um, hasn’t had as much attention historically.
Uh, there’s just not so many engineers out there with that background. You know, it’s, um, [00:06:00] I wouldn’t say it’s any more or less hard than lots of other of the complex subjects within a wind turbine. There’s just, there’s fewer people, uh, who, who know the same, uh, level of, um, stuff.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And there’re being, those resources are being, uh, taxed quite heavily at the minute, uh, with all the activity it happen in the OEMs.
Now, as operators, uh, start to receive newer blades and you see. OEMs obviously moving to bigger turbines and to specific models, so there’s actually fewer varieties of blades than there were a couple years ago, but there’s still quite a number of blades out there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So you, you’re going to get generally a more generic blade type at your specific wind site?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, quite possibly.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I, I think especially ge renova is, is gonna be driving down to a, a limited set of blades and a limited set of turbines. So they’re gonna be trying to apply that turbine. More globally than they have in the past, instead of tailoring a specific set of blades vest is, it’s gonna do something very similar, I think.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and in that mode, [00:07:00] if you’re an operator and you’re receiving these blades, you don’t really understand what’s about to happen unless you do your homework ahead of time. And I think that’s where the opportunity lies today to do something really inexpensive and smart up front. To understand what’s likely to happen.
Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And I think that all starts with, um, as we talked about, gathering good data, whether that be a laser scan or detailed photographs or measurements or NDT, uh, putting some sensors in the blade, some CMS equipment. I think all of that stuff to help really build up that knowledge base early.
To help start planning for future o and m, uh, operations? Yeah,
Allen Hall: so the simple one as blades come on site is to do a laser scan.
Nicholas Gaudern: Mm. Yep. And that takes how long? A few hours. And, and it’s much easier on the ground than it is a tower as well. And then you can use that full kinds of things. Yes. It’s very useful to do aerodynamic studies on.
But then, uh, other stuff that might not seem so [00:08:00] exciting, but is super important. How do you move blades around a, uh, handling yard if you have a CAD model that’s much easier to plan? How do you, uh, look at a new stacking frame or a, a lifting device that you might need to purchase? Well, it all comes back to having that initial data.
And I think what we see, uh, at Power Curve is there’s a huge variety of aerodynamic upgrades that are shipped with blades. And even though, um. Two customers might buy the same blade. They might not necessarily have the same upgrade pack on from the, uh, from the OEM. So really understanding what’s in your fleet from the start.
Where are those VGs? Where are the serrations, where are the spoilers? That’s critical going forward to understand how to manage those blades. And we talk to a lot of operators, uh, about VGs and other upgrades. It’s, uh, surprising to us how few know what is on their blades. They just don’t know. They don’t have that information.
They just arrive. Yeah. So, so what happens if some of those add-ons need replacing? What happens if you are missing [00:09:00] potential? Well, you don’t have a good data set to go back to, to really understand the problem. So yeah, we’d really encourage that from the get go to, to document that.
Allen Hall: The, the discussion I’ve seen at operators about trying to get a blade model out of the OEM goes like this, Hey, OEM, uh.
I would like to have the blade model so I can do some analysis and we can operate this thing once it comes off warranty, obviously. And the OM says no.
Nicholas Gaudern: Hmm.
Allen Hall: All right. Well, can I scan it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you own the blade at the end of the day. I own the blade so I I can scan it all day. Yeah. But they will not give you the model, but you can scan it.
And scanning’s not expensive. I get it. If they sent you the model, it’d be less expensive. Yeah. But that’s not going to happen. And you can’t even contractually get it because it’s ip. Yeah. Even though you can go scan the same blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: It doesn’t make any sense why you’re not scanning the blade at this point.
It’s so easy. Five years ago. Yes. Difficult
Nicholas Gaudern: today. Simple. Yeah. The scanning process [00:10:00] itself, I think where the real, uh, complexity comes in is then how do you convert that scan? Into a usable CAD model. I think that’s where the, the experience and um, and the skill of a, a good CAD engineer is really important.
So within, uh, power curve, we’ve been drawing blades for years and years and years now. So 30, 40 different blades we’ve scan, we’ve drawn, we’ve analyzed, and um, even the best laser scan may still have a few question marks around how you should interpret the data. So I’d encourage you that if you are going to go down that path.
Then, then call someone who’s done it a few times before and, and understand what’s going on.
Allen Hall: And then getting the details about the aerodynamic upgrades. I’ll call them quote unquote upgrades because sometimes I wonder if there are upgrades or not. Yeah. Uh, especially VGs getting those identified. It’s exactly where they are on the blade matters.
Trailing ulcerations, the kind of trailing ulceration you have, the sizes of them because they all vary in size [00:11:00] as you go up and down the blade, knowing where those are exactly out on the blade. And to me, when I see a variety of blade, a variety of blades made the same blade model, same blade revision.
Yep. But you start looking at ’em and you see those manufacturing tolerances move around quite a bit. It makes sense not to scan just one blade, but I’m probably gonna scan a variety of blades once they come outside. Yeah. Maybe they,
Nicholas Gaudern: maybe the OEM changes the philosophy about what they wanna do and I think with add-ons, um, there is a lot of, um, design philosophy involved.
With aerodynamics, as with lots of other disciplines, there’s a few ways you can skin the cat, right? There’s different ways that you can have a very similar effect with different products or different configurations, and I think you see that with aerodynamic upgrades quite clearly. So from some manufacturers we see, they’ll ship blades with bgs almost from root to tip.
From from the get go. You’ll see some OEMs that just have them in the route. You’ll have some that have none at all, and that that is still quite surprising, I think, because. Vortex [00:12:00] generators, particularly down in the root region of a blade to me, are, are kind of obvious now they’re proven. Uh, there’s a big stall zone in the root of the blade.
A VG array will help reduce that level of stall. Now you still have to engineer that solution. So perhaps one of the reason we don’t see all blades with them is the OEM didn’t have the capacity to engineer that solution because they didn’t have enough aerodynamics. Or they were too busy working on the next blade or whatever.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from those products being there. So this is why it’s important to, to understand what you’re getting and to ask the questions, well, why, why doesn’t the root of my blade have VGs on? Have you done a calculation that shows that they didn’t work? Uh, and if you didn’t, well maybe, maybe you could, or maybe you could talk to someone else.
Um,
Allen Hall: yeah, because you do see the offerings today. And the two obvious ones we see mostly in the states, particularly with VGs and add-ons, is Siemens VGs and trailing inspirations are everywhere. Yeah, all [00:13:00] over those blades.
Nicholas Gaudern: I think Siemens have been for a long time now, uh, very keen on add-ons. And I like that philosophy personally.
I, I think there’s, there’s a school of thought that says if you put an add-on on a blade, you’ve kind of, you’ve kind of failed. You know, you should have addressed in the design that problem, and therefore you don’t need to put an add-on on, but I would make an argument that there are so many things that an add-on product can do that are incredibly hard to achieve in a molded, uh, product.
So even if you think you could include everything in the mold, maybe the cost or the complexity of doing that. Is much harder than just sticking something on afterwards. So I, I don’t think there should be any discussion around it being like a bandaid or a cheat or a fix, or there should be an integrated part of a design process.
A VG will give you more stall margin. So if you design with VGs, maybe you can design your blade, uh, twist distribution a little bit differently. Uh, if you integrate serrations into your design [00:14:00] process, maybe you can change the type of error fo you use or the tip speed ratio that you run at, because the serrations can help reduce the noise.
So if you’re considering all of that from the get go, there’s a lot of power in these devices that are, as I say, are very difficult to achieve in just, uh, out of the mold product. Um, I, I think a lot of operators
Allen Hall: don’t realize how much impact those little plastic devices. Yeah. Can have on, on power production and which is revenue.
Yes. Straight revenue. That’s all that it is. Exactly. And they sort of discount them on some level because they made out of plastic. I don’t know why that is. It’s the, all the engineering and the literally thousands of hours of engineering and being in the wind tunnel, which is super expensive. Yes. To go figure these things out because you can’t calculate them with excel.
No, it’s, it’s way more complicated of a problem than that. You need,
Nicholas Gaudern: you need some higher fidelity tools. And again, I think that’s why there’s been, uh, differing levels of uptake among the OEMs, among different operators because it does require some, [00:15:00] some hard calculations to be done. Maybe some full rotor CFD calculations, but that is all within the grass.
Of what you can do quite economically today. You know, huge increases in computing, power cloud computing services. You can do this stuff
Allen Hall: Well. That’s the thing that I bring up to the operators quite often is I said, you use Chap GPT, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they go, well, yeah, yeah. Well, you realize the amount of compute power that exists behind those, that amount of compute that’s being built today is also gonna do CFD.
Yes. Is also gonna do all those complicated aerodynamic problems and solution sets. That we weren’t really able to do 10 years ago will be instantaneous to us in a couple of months. Yeah,
Nicholas Gaudern: I mean, we work with a, a cloud computing, uh, service, uh, at North. So they’re, they’ve been our cloud computing provider for, for a number of years now to run CFD on.
They’re just building some new data centers now in Denmark, and I believe they said one of them had a rate of power of 250 megawatts.
Allen Hall: Right. [00:16:00] Yeah. They’re having
Nicholas Gaudern: to build, imagine the, imagine the computing power behind 250 megawatts. Right?
Allen Hall: Because as GE Renova has mentioned in a couple of their more recent public, uh, notices, is that gas turbines are a big business for GE Renova for data centers.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And how much data center can you build in a year? Well, evidently about 20 gigawatts worth. Yeah. Quite a lot. Yeah. That’s a lot of compute power. Way more than the planet has ever had before. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So I think there’s, there’s some, I mean. The work we do, we think we’re quite innovative. We think we’re kind of, uh, leading the way in, in some fields, but we have to be very careful to, to stay on the train because very soon, uh, the computing power that’s gonna be available.
Might blow some of the stuff we are doing now out of the water. Sure will. So we, you know, we need to keep our eye on this fidelity. Yeah. The Fidelity’s gonna go
Allen Hall: way up, but the engineering that goes behind it still has to be there because garbage N equals garbage out. Exactly. You, you have to have people with
Nicholas Gaudern: the experience and the knowledge and the fundamentals because [00:17:00] even with things like vortex generators, there’s so many different ways you can use them.
And I think the two, the two biggest ways, uh, you know, going back to that comment about Blaze being shipped with VGs from root to tip. If you have VGs in the root, they’re fundamentally addressing stall from thick aerofoils. If they’re towards the tip, it’s more about robustness of the power curve, so helping the turbine deal with sub, uh, standard surface conditions, whether that be dirt, bugs, ice, fungus, erosion, whatever.
So even though you may be able to compute all this stuff, some of these fundamental nuggets of knowledge about how these add-ons should work or could work. It’s critical to help set up the problem. And, um, that’s, that’s where we come in hopefully.
Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk leading edge for a minute, just because there’s been a lot of data.
The Global Blade Group has published some five year study from a variety of operators that are trying different kinds of coatings and solutions. One of the things that I get asked weirdly enough is how much can I [00:18:00] possibly lose in a EP due to leading edge? And the numbers that are thrown at me are crazy.
Yes, people will tell me they’re losing 10%. There is no way you’re losing 10%. And
Nicholas Gaudern: that’s, that’s because they’re not using an engineering driven approach. Right. So we’ve, we’ve talked about data capture and, and sensible engineering. It applies to everything. And I think leading edge erosion is an example of something that just has too many reckons involved.
Well, you can actually work it out. Um, you can go to a wind tunnel, you can do CFD simulation, you can do our elastic simulations, and you can come up with a much more, uh, engineering driven and consistent, uh, loss number. So something that we’ve been working on for a long time now in power covers. How do you understand those losses?
And, uh, a year or two ago, we launched our ERA Vista tool, and that is. Uh, designed to take data from the field that real data we’ve been talking about, and combine it with the best engineering knowledge we can [00:19:00] to come up with that loss number. So, uh, a real blade model taken from a real laser scan, CFD simulation, scarda data, coupled into a, uh, a model of a turbine in, uh, in a blade element momentum form.
That is how the turbine would’ve been designed in the first place. So kinda this consistent tool chain. And what we find with leading a ros after analyzing a couple of thousand turbines now with a vista is losses one and a half, 2%. Something in that that’s, that’s a bit more realistic as a loss number.
Those are still significant numbers, but that’s, you should be worried about that number should. You don’t need to have it at 10% to be worried. No 1% on a big turbine is plenty enough to worry about. Right. Especially when you have a hundred of them. Yeah. So, so we don’t need the scaremongering, you just need that consistency and that, um, and that focus on what, what is actually happening and, and can I justify it?
So
Allen Hall: this goes back to a discussion you and I had a, a couple of months ago [00:20:00] about the spreadsheet that’s being shared around that was created at a university that supposedly. Tells us what the, the a EP loss is in an Excel like form. Yeah. That is being used so incorrectly right now.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, and it is like any tool, if you, if you use it in a smart way, then maybe you can get a sense of answer.
But trying to do something consistently and to see any kind of real difference between turbine models will be. Very challenging. Yes. Um, so what I like about some of these simple tools is it can help put you in a ballpark, right? That stops us having these silly conversations about 10% losses or 0% losses.
You know, it helps to kind of narrow the band, but if you then want to really understand, uh, what the answer is, much, much closer to reality. Then you have to have the blade data. Yes. Because every blade is different. Every turbine model is different. [00:21:00] You can’t have that generic setup if you want to have that, that subtlety so you can actually spend your money wisely.
Allen Hall: That’s the problem is that that tool’s being used sort of globally across a farm and everybody that’s involved on the engineering side and particularly on the finance side of the operators realizes I’m probably not gonna fix all of these. Yeah. Turbines. A hundred turbine farm, very common in the United States.
200, 300 plus. Now I need to know what turbines I need to go after based on real data. If I have a hundred turbine farm, I really want to pick out the 20 turbines that I’m gonna go put. Leaning as protection on. Yeah. I need to know that, but only when I really know it is to run it through Arab Vista.
And then it does give me the Yeah. The top 20
Nicholas Gaudern: EE Exactly. And that, and that’s exactly what it’s designed to do, to take, to give confident analysis that you can then base business decisions on. Yeah. Um, because there’s a lot of operators out there who would love to optimize how [00:22:00] they’re spending their, their own m budget.
And this tool will allow them to do that. Right. And I,
Allen Hall: I just, I’m starting to see more adoptions at Vista because that accounting
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. Is starting to take place and then you can start planning for the future as well. Right. So, so let’s say you have five years worth of inspection data that you can run through the system.
You can then see how the AP loss has progressed over five years. Yes. Where’s it going in the future? Uh, maybe I’m finding that my turbines from one OEM are performing way worse than turbines from another OEM. Sure, and that’s just useful information.
Allen Hall: Well, even on the a EP loss from existing leading edge protection systems, some of the more draggy lossy, uh, leading edge protection systems.
Are still being applied today. So as those systems fail, the amount of drag, a lawsuit that is created when the system eventually wear out is way more than just leaving the, the turbine alone, honestly. Yeah. So it’s not, you [00:23:00] need to think of it as a, a, a larger problem. You
Nicholas Gaudern: have, you have to take that system level approach for sure.
Right? You need to think
Allen Hall: about, yes. Okay. Then my blade has say it’s 1% right now I’m gonna put this coating on, but the coating’s gonna last three years roughly generally. What happens at year three? Well, I’m gonna have a 3% loss break.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. May maybe the l break in some, in some cases might make the situation worse.
Right. So, you know, it’s about just choosing the right, the right tool for the problem, isn’t it? It is. When should I put, uh, protection on? When should I not, when should I clean a blade? When should I not? When should I apply VGs? When should I not? But unless you have the data coming in and you have that, uh, setup that we’ve been talking about earlier in the, in the discussion here, that’s really hard to do.
It is. So it’s,
Allen Hall: it’s really hard to do. And even the discussion about leading edge protection, the, the, the issue I have with a lot of them is that they do leave a significant lip Yeah. Right. In a croker area.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Some of [00:24:00] the providers of those systems are, are like, well, it doesn’t really make that much difference.
And they don’t have any aerodynamic data. And I’ve talked to a person that doesn’t know that much about aerodynamics obviously. ’cause there’s only a few handful of people mm-hmm In wind that know that much, but. I think, okay, yes, you’re gonna recover the 1% a EP loss that the blade roughness did have, but you’re not really recovering all that.
No, not necessarily necessarily what a vista will help also tell you, it helps, it
Nicholas Gaudern: helps make a good decision around that,
Allen Hall: right? So you may have a, a preferred LEP solution, but if it really doesn’t change your a EP, then what are we doing?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And perhaps the structural implications weren’t that big on that turbine.
Right. So, so yeah, again, having that balance of the structural risk, the aerodynamic risk, I think, um, as you start gathering more and more inspection data as operators are having now that kind of risk, a score based approach where you’re bringing together structural risk, aerodynamic risk, financial risk, um, [00:25:00] and bringing all those things together, that’s, that’s where the money lies.
Allen Hall: The industry is getting smarter. About the way they spend money, which once interest rates went up and they know filter tower on the program. Every episode talks about interest rates and what effect it as. Yes, it does have an effect, but on an engineering group it has a really significant effect because you need to have a better model.
You need to have a better approach. You just don’t throw money at these problems anymore. You need to have an ROI based solution. That’s where Aero Vista comes in. That’s a real solution that’s been validated and has proven itself, and it’s gonna get you to the proper solution, the most cost efficient solution, the fastest way.
I haven’t seen a product out there, and I’ve been around quite a bit. I haven’t seen another product that even approaches that. No, no,
Nicholas Gaudern: I’m, I’m,
Allen Hall: I’m glad to
Nicholas Gaudern: hear
Allen Hall: that one. And it’s not gonna be on the spreadsheet, so if you’re working on a spreadsheet today, stop, pick up the phone, get on the internet. [00:26:00] Look up power curve.
They’re based in Denmark, but they’re worldwide. You guys are everywhere right now and start talking about cost effective solutions. Yes. Start looking at how to spend your money more wisely.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. Exactly.
Allen Hall: Now’s the time to do that. How do people get ahold of you, Nicholas? How do I get people get ahold of power crew.
Nicholas Gaudern: So they can check at our website. That’s, that’s power curve. Uh, dk, we have all our contact details on there. You can look up myself, uh, on LinkedIn. Also our CEO, Neil’s Business Development. Emil, we’re all on LinkedIn. You can reach out there through the website. Yeah, we’d love to talk to you.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. So this year is the year to get your a EP figured out and to get all your add-ons figured out and to get your LEP approach, uh, aligned with the cost.
And I, I think this is the time that Power Curve will be in the lead of this. And hopefully your phone starts ringing a little bit more because we, we’d love to help them do [00:27:00] that. Absolutely. Because I do, I think there’s so much opportunity for operators to save money Yes. And, and to have more production.
Yep. Which is what we need. We need the industry, particularly the United States, need to be able to prove itself more than ever.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Just use, use the data, use the expertise that’s out there and Uh, absolutely. And uh, yeah, give us a call. Nicholas, thanks for being back on the podcast. It’s been great.
Thanks, Allen.
https://weatherguardwind.com/powercurve-performance-analysis/
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2) America is now understood to be unsafe. Do you want to visit Palestine? Ukraine? Iran?
Renewable Energy
Commercial Solar Solutions: Real Case Studies by Cyanergy
The post Commercial Solar Solutions: Real Case Studies by Cyanergy appeared first on Cyanergy.
https://cyanergy.com.au/blog/commercial-solar-solutions-real-case-studies-by-cyanergy/
Renewable Energy
Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

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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