Monthly Archives: December 2018

PMP methodology & wind farm project management

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This week I had the pleasure to pass the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam – one of the two leading certifications for project managers, the other being PRINCE2 from the UK. The exam itself is notoriously not trivial: long (200 questions in 4 hours) and based on a book very hard to read, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (“PMBoK”).

In general I would recommend it, as it provide a solid methodology together with a broad suit of concepts, tools and techniques. On top of that, a great number of terms are defined in detail and this alone is a great benefit as this facilitate the interaction with other professionals providing a common language.

Said that, and totally aware of the fact that this type of methodologies are conceived to be “not industry specific”, I believe that there are many relevant difference between the PMP concept and the way wind farm project management is today, at least seen through the eyes of Project Managers (PM) working for wind turbine manufacturers or Main Contractors.

To give some example, one of the first steps in the PMP standard is the creation of a business case for the project.  This is something that you will hardly see in wind farm construction – maybe the wind farm developer has a business case, but the company building the wind farm is selling a product (the wind turbine) and some services (BoP, installation, maintenance). No need for business justifications, this is the core business.

Additionally, in the PMP methodology the PM should start to define the scope, the deliverables, the cost baseline, etc. I believe that in general the wind industry the PM receive all this inputs from the Sales Manager and/or Tender Manager, and even if there are always open points and deliverables that need to be defined more in detail this is not the main focus of the PM.

I have also rarely seen in wind farm construction a change management system as developed as the one in the PMP standard. I do however recognize that it has a lot of sense, providing a uniformity and a logic in the way changes are analysed and approved or rejected.

Finally yet importantly, the current version of PMP (sixth edition) include a variety of Agile Development concepts. These are more relevant in software development and similar environments: onshore wind farm construction is a business where these evolutionary development and adaptive planning techniques do not usually find opportunities to be used.

The new playing filed: multi-brand wind turbines service

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Yesterday I had the pleasure to meet my friend J. here in Hamburg.

J. works for V., a very big Danish wind turbine manufacture. Specifically he works in what looks like the new battle field for our industry – multi brand wind turbine operation and maintenance (O&M).

Basically it means that V. is offering not only Service for its own wind turbine models – it’s providing it also for competitors models, like Siemens/Gamesa, GE and the like.

There are several good reasons to do that - for instance:

  • Operational synergies. If you have wind farms already under maintenance in a specific area adding MW under maintenance will have a lower marginal cost.
  • Knowledge of the business already accumulated. iI you have thousands of WTGs under maintenance you should have a very clear idea of what could go wrong next during the life of the turbine. This  also include more in house knowledge to propose to the customer solutions like “fix it, don’t buy a new one”.
  • Scale factor in procurement: cheaper spare parts due to a very robust supply chain.

Additionally, customers could find interesting the “one stop shop” solution – for instance big utilities owning wind farms with several wind turbines brands might like the idea of having a single counterparts taking care of all the portfolio.

What strikes me the most is the possibility to implement technical retrofits solutions such us the vortex generators on competitors' WTG models. This basically means that when a wind turbine manufacturer discover a new technique to get more energy out of a turbine it could be able (in some cases) to apply this solution to the turbines of competitors.

I suspect that the market will probably move to a consolidation in the Service business arena, were several small to medium companies are operating locally

V. gave a clear example of it purchasing 2 O&M companies, UpWind Solutions in the US and Availon in Europe.

I also believe that sooner or later a war on intellectual property infringement will start, as several components are “tailor made” (that is, fabricated for a specific wind turbine manufacturer).

For sure you can reverse engineer them, but build them again could lead to legal problem. The same apply to the software of the WTG: many improvements are due to new algorithms and control system, and if you want to implement them you will probably need to put your hands on the software of the competitors.