Roads to Resilience

In the boxed extract from the case study, flexibility and appropriate diversity of resources enable Drax to develop its strategy and respond to changing circumstances. It also supports the conclusion that flexibility and diversity of resources greatly improve resilience.

Case study: Drax – protect the main asset The large number of contractors that are often on site requires specific risk management: “ The other arm to safety culture is when people employ contractors on site then we’ve got [an assessment] document ... Have they been on site before? Are they a regular on site? Are they permanently on site? And depending on what they’re doing, are they cleaning the offices or are they actually carrying out a complex lift? So depending upon the risk then these people will be audited ... And it is similar to an SOS audit [‘Spotlight on Safety Audit’]” (Generation Team Section Head). Right from the top of the Drax Group there is a fundamental focus on risk management and “ often our president will sit in our meetings, we meet as a group formally to review risk management in a deep dive way at least once a quarter ” (SVP Corporate Development, Drax Biomass). This is recognised at all levels of the organisation and a shift supervisor said: “ I would say safety is highest on priority as regards management ... so they would definitely take that into consideration first and foremost ” (Unit Shift Controller). Managers show a strong association with the assets: “ I say we very much protect the plant and the performance of the plant is very, very important to us. So our management team have a very good reputation: we’re seen as people that run a very safe and high-performance operation so the plant its availability is very, very high, our ability to execute capex projects on time and to budget I think is perceived by the market to be very, very good and I think some of that comes with your own one big asset so you’re going to look after it. If you’re running a portfolio maybe you’re not going to protect all your

assets as carefully but because we have one asset we have to look after ” (Head of Risk and Corporate Finance). This is recognised and respected by employees at other levels. For example, one employee said: “ I think the leadership we have is important, I think first and foremost the guy at the top of the [Drax Production Director] organisation ... has a wealth of experience of operating plants, he’s [gota] petrochemical background and he’s spent the last almost eight or nine years at Drax ... so continuity of leadership is important and the style of leadership is important ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). Across the Group, the hierarchy is present in terms of reporting lines but is restrictive. Managers perceive their role in a particular way. One said: “ What helps in my position is ... I’ve got an understanding of what happens ... I’m not a person who makes use of the hierarchy; I break down barriers rather than forming barriers. Not many people will look at me as a boss ... the guys respect the job that I’m doing and they’re happy to talk to me, we’ve all got a job to do and it is good to have good communications ” (Generation Manager). Another point is that “ all the senior management team work in a small open plan office so we don’t have our own offices ... you can overhear conversations ... and it really helps collaboration ” (Engineering and Safety Manager). Access to management is also deliberately made easy: “ If customers want to talk to directors they get to talk to directors ” (Operations Director, Haven Power). For more insights into resilience at Drax, refer to the full case study in Appendix A

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success