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Unlocking Wind Turbine Uptime: Pearce Renewables’ Growth, Technician Training, and Service Capabilities

Join hosts Allen Hall and Joel Saxum as they interview Zack Dorfman of Pearce Renewables, the United States’ leading independent wind service provider, about their rapid growth and investments in technicians. With over 1,000 GWO-certified wind techs performing services from maintenance to major component exchange, Pearce is committed to recruiting and career development. Technicians can gain insights into joining Pearce’s team, while the hosts explore their extensive capabilities enabling wind farm uptime. This episode is essential listening for wind techs interested in growth opportunities with Pearce Renewables.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to this special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Joel Saxum. Pearce Renewables is the nation’s largest independent service provider for wind, solar, EV charging, and energy storage. Pearce Renewables is rapidly growing with a team of over 1, 000 experienced and certified technicians.

They offer a wide range of services, including preventative maintenance, corrective maintenance, and capital improvements. In this podcast, we’ll be speaking with Zack Dorfman, Senior Vice President of Wind at Pearce Renewables. I’m interested to hear all the cool things that are happening at Pearce in wind.

Zack, welcome to the program.

Zack Dorfman: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Allen Hall: The 2023 repair season is just wrapping up at the moment. And from what we’re hearing, it’s been extremely busy. Can you just touch on some of the projects that Pearce has been involved with over the last couple of months?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been an exceptionally busy season for us. I think as many people, the beginning of the year was a little bit slower of a season, which kind of happens, especially on the wind side. We’ve had a tremendous amount of growth, specifically on major component exchange and blades.

We’ve been doing multi platform major component exchange and heavy lift jobs throughout the year. We’ve kept those teams exceptionally busy on the blade side, we’re a tier one blade supplier and we’ve really grown our customer base specifically with blades. And lastly on the maintenance side of the house we’ve really done a lot with some of our customers with localization of hubs and trying to find unique solutions to, to meet their needs.

Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. There’s a lot there. Has some of that work been part of the IRA bill? It seems like that kind of work has been picking up over the last couple of months. Are you getting involved in some of those projects, the repowering projects and those type of events?

Zack Dorfman: We’ve done some repowering projects in the past, none of which are currently under the IRA.

We’ve got a couple projects that is a precursor to a repower project that we’re working with currently now that is an IRA project. We’ve got a couple of projects currently going on right now that are IRA projects. We’ve been actively spending a ton of time around IRA and on behalf of our customers, been working with groups like ACP as well as making sure that we’re at the forefront with working with the government on guidance for what these projects look like.

Joel Saxum: Quick question for you then, Zack. So since you guys are a large ISP and you have… All kinds of capabilities, right?

You said blade repair, major correctives, some service and maintenance. You guys are a great spot to go for someone if they want to do a repower, because it sounds like you’re basically a one stop shop. Does that make sense?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, no, absolutely. Our goal is to be a holistic approach to servicing our customers, whether that’s servicing, major component exchange or replacing a card or even supplying a part. That’s really what our goal is to be that one stop shop. Specifically the repower side. We are the largest MCE independent service provider in the country. That lends itself very nicely to be able to go ahead and perform repower projects.

We’ve done multiple repower projects now, some of which we’ve done where we are the ISP that shows up and does all of the work. We’ve got other ones where we’re providing labor to work with some EPCs and some of the customers.

Joel Saxum: We hear that quite often from the larger companies in the world, right?

They’ve been through so many, managing five, six, eight, ten different subcontractors on site is a nightmare. It’s a pain in the butt, right? But for someone, especially if you’re a site manager and you have a repower project or some major project going on, it’s much easier if you have, hey, Pearce is on site, I’ve got one guy to talk to, and that person can disseminate all the information and all the things that need to be done within, on this field project, instead of, hey, this morning I got to talk to this person, I got to talk to the…

The gearbox guys, I got to talk to the crane guys, I got to talk to the blade people, I got to talk. So like that, I think that’s a major advantage and the actual asset owners and larger OEMs are asking for this kind of support.

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, we pride ourselves in going ahead and providing a single point of contact and project manager for each project so that you’re not going ahead to multiple people.

I think one of the other things of being one of the largest ISPs with so many offerings, we can go ahead, if you’re talking about a repower project or an MCE job, we can go ahead and provide while you’re there. There might be something else that takes place and you have to go ahead and repair a blade.

We can certainly provide that. And then we can have that single point of contact that’s working behind the scenes so you’re not making six phone calls to find the right person. That’s one of the things we pride ourselves in is communication and single party contact.

Allen Hall: And that involves having a lot of technicians that are trained, obviously, and it’s one of the big pain points in the United States at the moment is having an adequate staff of technicians to do this variety of projects.

Pearce Renewables has been one of the leaders in that in terms of getting technicians trained and being on site and knowing what the task is. You want to explain a little bit of the effort that Pearce Renewables takes to find technicians and to also to train them up?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, absolutely. This is a problem throughout the industry, right?

Finding net new capacity with regards to technicians. So one of the things that we’ve done, I came on board a little over two years ago. Shortly after I came on board, we went to full GWO certification in wind. We’ve got a training facility that’s GWO certified in California. We’ve got one that’s being built currently in Dallas.

Gives us a unique opportunity to go ahead and train our technicians so they have the capabilities to step on the site, be able to perform what the expectation of the customer is. The other thing is I think that gives us a unique opportunity around things like career path for technicians.

It gives us the ability to show them this is the path from go to tech one to tech two to tech three, keeps folks engaged. I think, going to GWO, I think right now, one of the things we’ve been involved with some of the workforce development stuff at ACP. ACP has done a really amazing job first on the wind side right now.

I know that they have future plans outside that with solar and battery. But in wind they’ve created these guidelines that are very similar to what GWO is sets the standard across the board. So people are showing up to site, they know exactly what they’re going to get. We go ahead and provide our technicians with a QR code that has all of their certifications on it.

So as they show up to sites, site manager can look at it, scan the QR code, sees all the certification that the technician has as they get there.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it does seem like managing technicians is probably one of the bigger tasks and obviously when you’re doing major component exchanges, those are big projects, but making sure the right people on that job all the time is, from an operator standpoint, is key, right?

I think talking to a lot of operators across the United States, and Joel and I talk to operators all over the world. The key complaint is the technicians aren’t trained up, technicians arrive on site not ready. They don’t have the tools, the equipment they need. Everything gets slowed down because they’re not prepared.

And I have not heard that about Pearce. I, what I hear from, about you guys is that you’re ready. You’re on site. Things are happening, which is what, as an operator, you want to see. That involves obviously having the sort of the size that you guys are and the ability to bring people in and train them up.

Now when Pearce goes out a project. I’m a, say I’m a large operator in the United States. What am I, what are they typically looking for when they call you up and say, Hey, we have projects, this is what we want to go do. How does Pearce project manage all that? And what’s the approach inside of Pearce?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I think, one of the pieces of things that we’ve done that really I think separates us is specifically as an ISP oftentimes people associate ISPs with body shops that are just providing bodies. We’re really keen on making sure that we provide solutions to the customers.

So we listen to what their needs are and what they’re asking for. We try to provide a solution. Shortly after I came on board, we restructured the way we run the organization. So we have technician supervisors and resource managers, and then we have project managers separate, right? So we have the ability to, we have, make sure we have a resource manager or technician supervisor that deals with the personnel issues and deals with people when they have challenges.

If you have a technician that really has to go to a graduation or a recital, we can work directly with them, making sure they have time off. I have the ability to replace them with a like technician so we can make sure that the project keeps going. With regards to the customer side and making sure that you have the all of the parts there.

All of the equipment there. Every individual project has project manager. Prior to the goal was yet a project manager that did both. Quite frankly, you can’t be that’s too much to deal with. So we separated the 2 functions. We now have a single point of contact. So we have a project manager that will kick off every single project.

And we’ll make sure the technicians have everything they need. But more importantly, their single point of contact and communication to get directly to the customer. And I think that’s really what has made us perform and have the ability to execute at a higher level. That, that being said, we’re not perfect every single time.

I’m glad to hear that you haven’t heard of any issues, but we are continuously striving to get better. So there are times when we stumble. I think how you react when you stumble is what’s important. And when I talk to the team and my senior leadership team, we really focus hard on what’s the reaction to the issue.

You’re going to have problems and don’t get defensive. Let’s welcome the feedback and then let’s figure out how to be better next time.

Joel Saxum: So that brings me to a question, Zack. So this is of course, watching Pearce over the last few years, you guys have grown massively. You’ve done a lot of organic growth.

But you’ve also done a lot of mergers and acquisitions and when you’re doing taking on mergers and acquisitions, there’s a there’s an unless you’ve been around a business that’s experienced that there’s a bit of a, an oddity around and you have different people, different cultures, different complete business processes, right?

You may buy a company or acquire a company or merge with a company and they do things a certain way. You do things a certain way. And now you have to change mindsets and ideas . And not only the processes and how they operate, but the culture and the and the, and like the safety culture is one of them, but like the culture about how we report and who we talk to and the way we treat our customers.

Like I said, watching you guys over the last few years, it’s like, Oh, Pearce bought this company. Oh, Pearce grabbed this company. Oh, Pearce is now these guys are a part of Pearce. That’s fantastic for growth. But how are you guys managing all of the. The mergers and acquisitions and melding those cultures together.

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, no, I will tell you this. When I first started into the role and we acquired a few companies, it was exceptionally challenging. I really, it was like. I’ve got a vision for culture. That means we’ll get there. And it’s quite, quite that simple. And it’s actually quite more challenging.

I think the key is you set, a really direct path into what you want to do and you communicate that and over communicate that we’re super fortunate. We’ve got a tremendously talented VP of mergers and acquisitions. He’s stepped in and he’s helped once we go ahead and acquire companies also helped set a path for what the integration looks like. We’ve got tremendous back office staff. That’s gone ahead and jumped in that jumps in regardless of whether it’s wind, whether it’s solar, whether it’s. Telecom that team has been exceptional with regards to integration.

Again, though, I think the thing is that one, it’s tremendously challenging to set culture, right? And so I think what you have to do is communicate the direction of what you want to do. You have to frequently communicate with employees, whether that’s technicians or salary folks. And make sure that the direction is clear and what we want to do and how we want to do it.

We’re also exceptionally lucky to some of the technology that we use. We’ve got a homegrown platform that’s on the force.com platform that was originally built. It’s an insight platform. It gives us the ability to really gather tons of data and gives us a competitive advantage. So I think when you see what a company came from

technology wise and what they’re going to. I think that’s a easy buy in from that standpoint. And then I think there’s some, very basic tenets that I think speak across all types of businesses, right? So we’re very big and double down on our safety culture. I think quality is an easy one to just go ahead and talk about, right?

Because everybody wants to do the right thing. You want to go ahead and satisfy customers. And if you have a way in which to do that, that works people buying quickly. Again, I think communication is the biggest, I think we’re also very lucky with the talented folks that we have internally to help the integration.

That’ll make it a little easier.

Joel Saxum: To piggyback on the communication concept, when you and I were talking off air a little bit, you mentioned basically part of your management KPIs, key performance indicators and metrics that you follow, is how many of the direct reports each member on the team must actually visit with face to face per year.

And that combined with the idea that you have maintenance or basically hubs for Pearce around the country can you touch on that a little bit and the advantage that brings to you, your organization?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, no, absolutely. And listen, it starts with me, right? So every single year I mandate that I personally go out and see 15 to 20 percent of all technicians.

And 15, 20 percent sounds like it’s not too hard, but when you start to add, add in all the customer travel and that kind of stuff it gets exceptionally challenging. Starts with me. And then, I believe in a leadership style with my directors. All the directors should be on the field.

They should be visiting their teams. All the resource managers should be visiting teams on regular basis. When we see that there’s not enough of that, we’ll actually implement a schedule, right? And we’ll go ahead and say, Hey, I want to schedule. I want to know how often people are going out and how often they’re seeing technicians.

One of the biggest things with regards to technicians and why they want to stay and why they want to leave is their manager. So they either have a positive relationship or a negative relationship based on that manager. So as that manager gets to know that technician, seeing them face to face, taking them out for dinner, taking them for lunch that gives us an opportunity to go ahead and forge those relationships and try and spin it for a positive so that the technician can have the experience that they want and the manager can have the experience they want.

Like I said, it starts with me. It’s something that I learned a long time ago and it’s important to how we operate.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Listening to getting that feedback directly field to office connection is huge. I think that a lot of companies miss that. And you can see cultures in other ISPs or other companies in the world.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what industry you’re in when you end up having like field level technicians, it sometimes can become an us versus them. And that is not how you build a culture of success within a company. So getting out there and getting in, being able to get face to face, gather feedback and really listen to the people in the field.

Having that connection I think is that’s a separator for you guys and that’s hugely important.

Zack Dorfman: I think it is very important and every single one of the technicians I visit, I give my cell phone number to. And so I’m a senior vice president, but we try to keep it like a small company.

And so you can reach out to me whenever you want. It’s actually pretty rewarding as well. There’s oftentimes there’s small requests that are really easy to fulfill. Someone needs a new headlamp. Someone found this really cool reflective vest that they’d rather have because it’s lighter weight, it’s hot outside.

It’s really quick to go ahead and make those, buy those things and send them out to the technicians. We’re not going out and buying at full scale for everybody every single time, but if there’s one technician that makes a difference with, we try to make make an opportunity to

help them out.

Allen Hall: Right now it’s technician silly season, I call it. It’s what they call it in racing. Silly season where everybody’s moving around and technicians are, unfortunately ISPs, losing their job and then they start looking for the next job. It’s it is a real tumultuous time for a lot of technicians and it seems like with Pearce and a number of other larger companies that there’s job stability in a lot of cases.

And I want, I wanted to touch on technician recruitment and how Pearce goes about that. And you don’t have to disclose anything that’s top secret within Pearce, but what kind of person are you looking for? Are you looking for people that have experience? Are you looking for people that. Are mechanically inclined, or maybe have a community college degree, or is an electrician, mechanic.

Where are you finding those sweet spots on recruiting people to Pearce?

Zack Dorfman: We very much value technicians that have experience. So we definitely are looking for technicians to have experience. That being said though, across the industry, we look at ourselves as industry leaders. And so we need to go help solve part of the problem, and part of the problem is that as technicians jump from job to job, we’re not creating any net new capacity in industry.

So it is important to go ahead and take a chance on somebody who maybe has a mechanical background, or has an interest, or we’re partnering with, certain technical schools that either have a wind program or some type of program similarly. We also heavily recruit with the military. We’ve got a tremendous recruiting team.

One of which has an extensive background in the military. And we utilize that to our advantage.

Allen Hall: Does that military connection is it providing you a good link? Because it seems if an 18 year old joins the military, they, by the time they, they get out at 21, 22, 23. They have a lot of mechanical experience.

A lot of them are working on all kinds of vehicles, all kinds of equipment. The electric, electrical guys are pretty competent in what they’re doing. It just seems like that’s a ready pool of candidates that are used to going place to place yeah it’s not really roughing yet, but it’s something that they’re used to.

Is that a good resource for you?

Zack Dorfman: It’s been a tremendous resource for us. We continue to value that very much. Those folks that are coming out with mechanical background out of the military generally start with us, a couple of bucks more an hour than some of the other folks that we hire in.

And they’re ready and they’re, they have a feel for what they’re doing. Their willingness to travel, they understand the hierarchy of corporate culture. It works tremendously well.

Joel Saxum: Cudos to you guys for doing your part in helping our nation’s armed forces with that transition into the civilian life too, because that’s tough.

Yeah. Should we touch on some of your basically, the MCE heavy lift stuff you guys are a leader in and some of the other services.

Zack Dorfman: As an independent service provider, we’re trying to go ahead and service the, our customers from wing to wing. Our idea, we have basic maintenance services where we’ll do site support and maintenance is oil changes.

Those kinds of things we also go ahead and we’ve got the most diverse, the largest. A major component exchange or heavy lifts operation of all the independent service providers. We think it’s important. We think there’s a true need out there to go ahead and be able to service multi OEM platforms.

So we go ahead, we recruit the highest talented folks in the industry across different platforms, and then we will fill them in with some of the folks that we’ve trained in house. The other thing that I think is a huge advantage to us, we have every single one of our major component exchange teams comes complete with a full context of toolings.

Many of those are specific to the individual OEM that we’re working on. So well over a hundred MCE technicians we’ve been able to keep them busy all year long with a backlog usually upwards of one to two months at a minimum. That’s been great for us that the techs love it cause they’re constantly working.

So that’s been outstanding. In addition to that, we’ve got quite a few folks that are in the advanced electrical troubleshooting side. We really, on that group, we really focused on the tech three and tech fours in the industry, the highly advanced, highly skilled folks. We’ve recruited a bunch of those folks, brought them in.

Those are the folks that can show up and they can literally troubleshoot anything. They can figure out how to get a turbine up and running. That’s been a huge bonus for us to be able to help our customers out when they’re in a bind. In addition to that, we’re a tier one blade repair service provider.

We’ve got two composite engineers that are well known in the industry. We have had upwards of times upwards of over 120 blade technicians. And we can repair anything from the most complex Category 5 all the way down to a cosmetic Category 1 blade. In addition to that we also have a team that is very skilled at demolition.

So no one likes to talk about the fact that we have, unfortunately, broken blades or fires that take place. And so we’ve got a team that could come in and go ahead and remedy that and bring that down. Oftentimes, there may be some negative publicity with that. So it’s important to act quickly. We’ve got a highly skilled group that is able to go ahead and take those down.

And when the customer wants it, we also rebuild it for them right then and there. And then probably lastly, I didn’t talk about we do have a 32, 000 square foot parts facility in the center part of the country in Illinois. And so we’re able to provide cross OEM multiple parts. Pretty much just about anything you want, we can find at times we can find it faster than others that sometimes we can’t, but we do we do have a large facility that kind of helps us out when customers need things.

We also have some engineers within that group as well. We got one talented engineer right now that helps us design tooling, helps us design parts, works on reverse engineering of parts or works, works on 3D manufacturing of parts. Yeah, quite a bit of work that we can do on the wind side.

Allen Hall: Parts are always a problem. It’s supply chain right now is really delayed and if you have parts in a warehouse, that is a piece of gold. Now I’m curious because you’ve, you guys are involved, you guys are involved in pretty much every aspect of repairs and maintenance on wind turbines. What are the, the top three problem areas you’re seeing at the moment?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, I think top three problem areas at the moment right now, it’s an industry wide thing is recruitment of technicians. We’ve already talked about it a little bit, but recruiting of solid technicians that have a background. You can’t bring everybody in brand new. You have to have some talented folks that are going to help lead the way, be the leaders of the team.

I think that’s probably the largest challenge that we have. I think the second biggest challenge is probably more so around seasonality. Some areas of wind are worse than others, but specifically blades, seasonality and blades. Everybody wants to go ahead and get their blades repaired from July to October.

And the problem is how do you solve going ahead and getting that done? It’s really challenging. And so the folks that are willing to work in those shoulder seasons and willing to get some of their work done, that really helps out the industry. One of the other big challenges that we see is this quality of the products within the industry.

And so we’re seeing serial defects and major quality issues that are taking place. And then it creates a capacity issue with regards to the ability to repair those and get them back up online quick enough. Certainly there’s a couple OEMs out there that we’ve been working with to help them alleviate some of that stuff.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, and that’s a problem that we, as people around the industry, everybody sees it, right? And it’s a black eye to… To the industry as a whole. So I’m glad that you guys are there to support the OEMs and move it forward, get those turbines back up and running and be the capacity that they can rely on to, to call when they need the help.

The last thing I want to touch on is we are, it’s November right now. So it’s tender season in the wind industry. And everybody’s getting their tenders ready. Everybody’s getting their projects ready and doing the back office work to get ready for springtime. Blades, things that get going.

You guys said you had a backlog with some of your MCE stuff, so that’s fantastic. But there will be repowers and other projects that kick off in the spring. So what does the new year and going into the new year look like for Pearce right now?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah. Right now, like you said, a lot of back office stuff going on specifically around things like budgeting and kind of understanding what we’re looking at from a training perspective.

We’re actively trying to identify which technicians we’re going to promote into key roles. Figuring out training plans for some individual people to get them from Tech 2 to Tech 3. Some key Tech 1s that we want to get Tech 2s. I think that’s some of the stuff we’re working on right now. We’ve been exceptionally fortunate.

We’ve done some really unique things around localization with a couple customers. Those folks are going to be continuing to work throughout the year. It’s really a win for everybody. We’re able to give our customers a lower price. And then we’re able to get folks that are going to probably stick around a little bit longer.

They’re going home every single night. They’re home on the weekends. So that’s really been a huge plus for us. So we’ll be a little bit busier probably than we’ve been in the last couple of years with that regard. The only area that I think we’re still trying to solve for right now is some of the blade stuff.

And we’re working with a couple of customers right now to look at locking in capacity for later on in the year if we go ahead and do some of that work and some of the kind of shoulder months, if you will.

Allen Hall: Zack, I really appreciate having you on the program. How do people reach out and connect with Pearce Renewables?

Zack Dorfman: Yeah, absolutely. You guys can reach out directly to pearce-renewables.com. I’d be glad to connect with any of you on LinkedIn, Zachary Dorfman. And then we also have a parts web store that you can get to also from Pearce Renewables as well.

Allen Hall: Zack, great to have you in the program. I learned a tremendous amount and yeah, looking for another exciting 2024 repair season.

You guys are going to be busy.

Zack Dorfman: Absolutely. I appreciate you having me.

Unlocking Wind Turbine Uptime: Pearce Renewables’ Growth, Technician Training, and Service Capabilities