Roads to Resilience

At Haven Power and Drax Biomass International there are different risks but both organisations also have strong cultures. Haven Power is customer-focused and prides itself on the speed with which it develops new products and its openness to customers: “ we’re very much customer centric, focus on the customer, [and] if customers want to talk to directors they get to talk to directors ” (Operations Director, Haven Power). As it will be operating pellet manufacturing plants, Drax Biomass has a focus on safety, similar to Drax Power Station, but also a strong focus on recognising business risks: “ the biggest risk we face is this regulatory risk … you would hope the government would stick to its deal … but clearly a leap in [another] technology … would have a negative effect ” (Head of Biomass Development). Within the Group as a whole, there is a reliance on a functional structure and expertise but, at the same time, “ we always aim to do things cross- functionally so the teams that are assembled are drawn from the various functions within the business … the production side and the finance, procurement, fuel purchasing, logistics so there’s a team assembled that is truly cross functional across ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). An example of how the functional expertise is utilised is “ the engineering function … [is] responsible for the long-term integrity of the assets … establishing the best means of maintaining the capability of the plant and enhancing it, improving efficiency, reliability and the availability of the plant … we provide the sort of higher technical level support for operations and maintenance ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). Working in parallel to the functional structure is a strong system of risk management committees in every area of the three businesses and regular risk management meetings. For example, in Drax Power Station there are, “ meetings where we look at major tasks that we’re going to perform and we get key people together, we’ve got a technical risk steering committee ” (Generation Manager). Different functions come together to assess different types of risk and there is, “ a very, very effective communication process around safety in terms of if we have an incident on site, everyone on site receives a weekly briefing on safety ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). In Haven Power the risk assessment has a different focus. For example, “ the risk management committee [looks at] the quoting process … [because potential customers] get a credit score … [and] we use a system called ‘Risk Audit Plus’ and that gives us a view of the overall score of our portfolio ” (Operations Director, Haven Power). Each risk register is “ managed by each of the relevant business risk committees but they’re drawn together into a group risk register … there’s oversight of that by the audit committee … ” (Director of Corporate Affairs, Drax). Across the Drax Group, there is “ a group risk management committee which … sits above the individual business risk committees ” (Director of Corporate Affairs). The idea behind this is to monitor key issues across the Group and spread ideas. Overall, the tight risk management structure is well understood and “ people recognise the value that that governance process adds, so we have a strong structure and there’s a real cross-functional strength … so we have truly cross-functional reviews on risks ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). Business structure

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Appendix A Case study: Drax Group