The situation was that a wind turbine supply business had undertaken to deliver a large number of working wind farms in Poland by the end of the year, this “gold rush’ had been prompted by the end of the existing subsidy regime. Given the turbine supply constraints it was clear that the bulk of the erection and commissioning of the wind turbines would take place in Q4, with very high financial risks being taken on by the business for non completion. This challenged the supply chain in all aspects from supply of components to that of equipment and manning. Another factor was that the last quarter of the year was going to increase the weather risks considerably, this risk is largely based on the wind lifting limits for cranes, as soon as winds exceed around 10 m/s, measured at the top of the jib, all lifting has to stop for safety reasons. In the last quarter, as the weather became more stormy, the expectation was that we would lose a number of days each week because of this.
The Project Managers were experienced, however it was an unprecedented position as the volume of work had increased dramatically with the ability to claim contractual time extensions unavailable This was accentuated by the high probability of delays in the delivery of components and resources, caused by the much larger than normal volumes sold for the period. The other factor was that the contracts were only finalised very late on so that supplier commitments had to be made much earlier than was normal. A holistic approach was taken for all aspects of this with support for the PM’s being put in place early on, one of the first decisions taken was to reserve additional sub-contract resources against an expected sales volume, this was done by senior management.
In parallel to the external supplier commitments the internal supply chain was reviewed weekly at a business level to identify every opportunity to cut the time to site for the delivery of the major components. As many of these were sourced globally transport was key to achieving this as there were also delivery constraints for site access, equipment and resources. This also allowed prompt prioritisation of where resources were to be deployed to get the most out of what was available.
As time was a key factor then the project programmes were used to see what the emerging opportunities and risks were, a weekly review with every PM was then instituted using the programme as the agenda to discuss the situation both on the ground, but also to check how they were handling the situation personally. Based on this both resource deployments to site and the necessary support to the PM was determined. This allowed both a portfolio and an individual view to be maintained over the period. Although the objectives were largely the same each Project was different which required individual personalised intervention and support from the senior management to each PM. This approach allowed both the individual and the overall objectives to be achieved.
The business was the only company that successfully achieved the end of year objective of all contracted wind farms meeting the necessary statutory requirements. It was actually a very close run thing as the final WTG was erected on the last available day before the New Year where the wind was low enough to allow erection. This outcome gave it a very strong market position going forward as it had delivered it’s promises. When a similar situation arose in Denmark a few years later it was very clear that both the organisation and the individuals had learnt from the experiences in Poland as the objectives were met using a similar approach, with far less stress.