It was the highest they had ever climbed. Janusz walęsik, pawel bylewski and tomasz dadas usually work in low altitudes as operators in the goleniów, poland plant, but that is all about to change.

In October 2015, three LM Wind Power operators accepted an invitation from the Service team to join a working in heights test – exchanging their comfortable routine in the workshop with a 45 meter climb up the plant chimney. The result? Sore arms and exhaustion but permission to continue service training which will eventually allow them to perform work on a real wind turbine in the field.

Flexibility and variation
Manager, Service Operations, Marcin Majdzik, is the man behind the untraditional recruitment of service technicians in the plant. Over the past couple of years, he and his colleagues have worked hard on the integration of Service back into Operations – contributing to a more sustainable service organization, by increasing flexibility and utilizing the talented employees that already work for LM Wind Power.

"Training operators to also perform service tasks in the field is a good example of a synergy,” Marcin explained. ”Our service business is growing and the tasks require a high level of skills in blade maintenance and repair. The operators in the plants already have those skills, so it is easier to equip them to work in the field – provided that they are not afraid of heights of course!"

Marcin has seen his share of aspiring service technicians who panicked during the climb up a turbine. This can be a very costly affair not to mention highly unpleasant and unsafe for those working in the crew. ”Working as a service technician requires quite a lot of training, like rescue at height, firefighting, working with electrical tools, etc. There are also a number of certifications. All that training will be wasted if people are afraid of heights. So we’ve learned from bitter experience that we need to test that first,” Marcin smiled.

Luckily Janusz, Pawel and Tomasz passed the test and look forward to the adrenalin kick of going up and down a real turbine!  They are now ready to go through the rest of the training and start working in the field which Marcin assesses is realistic to achieve before the season ends.