As you will be aware, the 2019-Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak continues to develop. Our priority is the wellbeing of our staff, clients, partners and our communities whilst ensuring we continue to deliver our services and support our clients. The Natural Power management team has been monitoring the situation closely to ensure it has a clear understanding of how it may impact operations, we have updated our business continuity plan and are focussing on taking all necessary measures to maintain our operational capabilities, support our clients and fulfill our commitments.
We continue to take the lead from government and associated organisations as to how we address this situation and as such we are adopting a working from home policy for our staff where circumstances allow. We have had a proven, work from home corporate policy in place for some time and over the last few weeks have upgraded some of our IT systems to support the increased home working. Our staff can be contacted as per normal through either email, mobiles, Microsoft Teams or Skype. Direct-dial numbers in most cases will be redirected to mobiles or the switchboard. If you can not get our staff directly, please contact our switchboard on +44 (0) 1644 430 008 or +44 (0)1786 542 300 or on our general contact email: sayhello@naturalpower.com
Our staff has been briefed on actions to take to minimise transmission, how to recognise potential symptoms and the action they should take if they think they have been infected. Natural Power has also implemented a restricted travel policy: prohibiting any travel to locations deemed as high risk and minimising all other travel where possible but we will continue to fulfill our business obligations regarding site visits etc. where safe to do so. We will, where possible, be minimising overnight travel by using staff local to the sites.
We operate the largest independent 24/7 control room in the UK managing renewable assets. To ensure the continuation of ControlCentre services, we have put a business continuity plan in place which includes:
- The utilisation of our secondary ControlCentre facility in Dumfries, and splitting our workforce to reduce the possibility of cross-contamination;
- 24/7 IT support by an external provider to support our own in-house IT team;
- The duplication of key systems on multiple servers or in the cloud to reduce the risk of system failure
- Assessing the capabilities for personnel to work from home in the event that large scale isolation is required
- Intensifying training and upskilling to provide more competency across the team to fulfill specialist duties
Within the Servicing team, we are working to ensure continued safe service operations at the relevant windfarms, this will include working in segregated teams to minimise contact. We continue to review all current advice and guidelines, both internal and external, to define levels of site attendance in line with Covid-19 containment/spread information. Client Asset Managers will be kept abreast of all changes in safe service attendance to windfarms as and when the situation at a local level escalates from the current normal site operations.
Our wind farm and OFTO managers in the Asset Management team are working hard to minimise operational disruption to sites with mitigations being put in place to minimise any potential impacts. The team is working on specific actions for sites and will contact asset owners directly to discuss these as the situation progresses.
Our consultancy services remain largely unaffected with our team of experts continuing to deliver services remotely and, subject to risk assessment and liaison with our clients, surveying or ground investigation work on site (again with staff segregated into small teams to minimise any risk).
Our teams continue to be available to support your projects throughout this period so if you have any further questions, then do not hesitate to get in touch.
Regards
Stephen Trotter
Managing Director