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Joel Saxum spoke to Alfred Crabtree from the Blade Repair Academy at Blades USA in Austin, TX. They discussed the challenges faced by blade repair technicians, including the physically demanding nature of the job, frequent travel, and high attrition rates. Crabtree also talks about the Blade Repair Academy’s mission to provide training and vetting for blade repair technicians, and initiatives to create a dedicated occupation and apprenticeship program for this field. Visit https://www.bladerepairacademy.com/home.
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Joel Saxum: All right guys we’re back here at Blades got Alfred Crabtree here from the Blade Repair Academy. Alfred’s big mission with the Blade Repair Academy is bringing new net capacity to the wind industry, right? We need more composite technicians. We need more composite technicians, that’s right. For sure.
We’re at Blades here. Alfred presented yesterday and this is one of my highlights from the conference, not because you’re sitting next to me and I’m saying this. Thank you. But just in general because we have had like we said, a lot of Subject matter experts, a lot of the, I’m in charge of all the blades for this fleet and that fleet discussions around inspection.
What should you do with your blades when they come out of the manufacturing facilities? DNV talking about certain things a lot of really good high level engineering stuff. Yes. But yesterday, Alfred brought A human element to the discussion. That’s right. So I’m, I say this right here, so it’s recorded and everybody knows that I’ve never repelled downwind.
That’s not my, where I’ve come into this sector. You have many times. So Alfred’s presentation yesterday was a fantastic video in the background as he spoke over it of himself, basically getting ready to drop over the hub and to send down a blade to do some work and all of the things that go into that.
While you were speaking about what’s really happening with the technicians in the field. That was the diversion. That was the thing that was different than everybody else. Everybody’s talking about high level engineering. This is what we do. You brought the human element. You said, this is what’s going on with the techs in the field.
This is how long they’re away from their families. This is the life cycle of a person in the field. This is how long they last. This is how we’re losing good capacity. That’s right. So you’re bringing different story to this environment that was built. From what I talked to a lot of other people as well very well received.
Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. I’ve got a lot of good feedback and the human element is really integral to all these initiatives and ideas. We saw a lot of science, we saw a lot of data, which is great. And a lot of business and all of that hinges upon two hands that can execute grinds with the grinder. And so that was, the focus of my talk was to bring that back into the conversation about how we deal with these problems we’re facing.
Joel Saxum: So we know we have a shortage of technicians, From the general wind technician to the specific people that worry about different problems. Hey, we’re talking blades here, right? We know we have that shortage. Can you talk to us a little bit about that life cycle of that person in the industry?
Alfred Crabtree: Sure, sure.
On average the life cycle of a blade repair technician is about five years. And it’s a short span whether you’re successful in the gig or not. And there’s a lot of factors that influence that. First off, the, it takes a couple or three years to become proficient. Yeah. With the grinder and to be able to execute.
It’s a very tough environment on the job to learn from because we have this vertical distance between the person who’s doing the work and the support person and the roles are really detached from each other. Also in this industry, people have been using skillset as a form of competition and they covet.
Their wisdom, but the tribal wisdom falls out very quickly because of this high attrition rate. So if you go out on this job, you have to be able to work outdoors in extreme weather conditions many hours a week. And we, a lot of us think we want that, but when you get there, you do it until you do it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then work at height is a physiological switch that you either have or don’t. And there’s no way that you can macho through it. No, it’s, lead to poor health. And then the wear and tear and fatigue. You’re away from your family. Yeah, for sure. You can spend a couple weeks in a hotel room waiting for the weather to break.
That’s not good for your mental health. No. There’s a lot of challenges. And then let’s say you are successful and you’ve made a lot of money and now you want to buy a house and maybe met your partner or you’re having a child. There’s a lot of reasons why we a successful technician will want to get off the road.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Then you want to be home. You want to be home. You want to enjoy that house that you spent all that time working for. Yeah. Enjoy that partner. You may find her or him in a random city somewhere.
Alfred Crabtree: You, this is very true. And in fact, if you’re meeting, having a successful episode in your life, you’re smiling and you’re more attractive.
And so it definitely happens. And then another thing that we need to make a distinction between blade repair technicians and wind turbine techs are mostly based. Where their farm is. Locally. They work at XYZ Wind Farm and that’s where they report to work. There certainly are traveling techs, but almost, I’m pretty sure all the blade repair techs are traveling.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. There’s not very many wind farms that can support technicians that sit at a mall. So you have those two distinctions, of course. The, the construction side of things, they’re traveling as well. But either way, so I’ve lived that traveling life, but in the oil and gas world for a while.
It’s not. It’s not good for your health. It’s hard to have a routine where you can actually, you know, if you like the gym, or you like to eat well, or anything like that. It’s difficult. It’s a young person’s game.
Alfred Crabtree: I have hundreds of thousands of reward points on hotels, and cars, and airplanes, and I’m not the least bit interested.
I spent four out of eight years in hotel rooms.
Joel Saxum: Yep.
Alfred Crabtree: And yeah.
Joel Saxum: So it doesn’t, yeah, it’s not something that you’re like, I’m gonna go and do this for 30 years. No. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not. And one of the, one of the difficult things, and you touched on it, and I’ve had discussions with a lot of people in the industry about this is, there’s not always a clear and defined career path, right?
Very rarely is it like, oh, you’re a Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 3, Tech 4 and then once you’re a Tech 4, they’re like, yeah, you’re a Tech 4. Can you go into project management? Do you go into HSE? Do you go to be a fleet manager? That’s difficult because there’s not, that path isn’t clear.
Alfred Crabtree: It’s not clear.
And if you think about it, you would have to have new net growth to enable those positions in management to open up for your alumni or, your esteemed composites experts. They, unfortunately that expertise leaves because there’s nowhere to go.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, and after you’ve done it for long enough, you’re, you just simply, the term is you get burnt out.
Huh. You need, you’re, I gotta be done with this. So that probably happens to most people by, and I’m gonna very much generalize here. If you’re doing it in your 20s, by the time you’re hitting 30, you’re looking for something else. And the trouble is, You’re now the person out there in the field that has all of this knowledge, like you said, the tribal knowledge.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s right, and it disappears. And part of that problem is this is not an occupation. The Department of Labor does not have a job description or a job title called a blade repair technician. Yeah. Blade repair is one line item in the wind turbine technician.
Joel Saxum: It surprises me because, I’ve focused on blades for most of my time in wind.
So that’s been such a forefront in my wind energy experience that the Department of Labor doesn’t even see it as a task.
Alfred Crabtree: But, it’s not incumbent upon them, it’s incumbent upon the industry to, to apply for and create, to create that description. So that’s an initiative I’m working on. long term.
Joel Saxum: Fantastic. So you had mentioned talking with the department of labor on that one. Is there any other initiatives that you’re trying to bring the wind industry together on?
Alfred Crabtree: Sure. I spoke at the wind workshop in Boulder a couple of weeks ago and I met the folks from IACMI there and they have a workforce development effort and staff.
And so I Commiserated with them pretty quickly and they’re out of Knoxville. I’m in Tennessee. So gonna work with them as a industry sponsor. I hope I’ve spoke with the Department of Labor and have looked into what it takes to create an occupation and then I’m working on an apprenticeship program huge studying What it takes to get to do that.
It requires a corporate or industry sponsor, and then we need about a dozen people who can speak on behalf of the program. And would they accept it as industry leaders? Okay. Bureaucracy is not my strong point, but I’m pretty passionate about it and so far everyone in the industry I’ve talked to is on board and willing to help.
Joel Saxum: It’s part of the IRA bill, right? There’s things in there now. I don’t know the specifics on it. I’d have to talk to some, People smarter than me, but I do know that there’s a line item in there that says if you want to qualify for XYZ, you need to have people that are working here as a part of an apprenticeship.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s right. And so what’s unfair is that there are apprenticeship programs for wind turbine tech. And so companies like ISPs that are just in blades to get that benefit. It’s really their clients who get the benefit. Okay. And so they have to hire contractors that have a certain percentage that go through that program.
So blade service providers may be putting people through. A useless apprenticeship program for them just to get this contract to get involved in this business And so if we had a separate program that was just for blade techs, I think that would level the playing field.
Joel Saxum: Yeah for the opportunity for companies to take advantage of that and we’re looking at the same concept I like to speak on it a lot is rising waters floats all ships.
That’s a huge theme for me, right? So if we bring that standard up and we bring this an accreditation Or an apprenticeship program or something forward. For blade technicians, whether they come through your program or anybody else, right?
Alfred Crabtree: We’re raising the whole industry exactly and I think to that end if I can get a lot of the industry leaders involved I think here’s what there’s my challenge to the industry.
Let’s create a scholarship to fund Let’s say 400 new technicians to enter the field and at the same time upscale 200 existing technicians, we need upscale technicians today to take care of the serial flop problem. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re going to take those people away from just your preventative and your typical maintenance that comes up.
So we need to backfill that. And if we can’t. As an industry contribute to new net growth. It’s not, we can, we take it out of the realm of competition and we’re not competing with skill sets. People aren’t jumping for a dollar here and there. That doesn’t help anybody. That’s the other half is that technicians can take advantage of this market of scarcity and jump from ship to ship.
Joel Saxum: And it leads to poor quality, to be honest with you. Yes. Because it’s great, technician on an extra dollar. I’m not gonna blame you for that. But when we jump from company to company, before you even get involved in, I’ve seen this, before you get involved in company A, when you came from company Y, you don’t know their HSE policies, you don’t even know how your fuel card works in your truck, before you’re heading to site, whether there’s a different process on a different thing, because in the industry, a lot, to be honest with you, unless you have work instructions from an OEM, and you’re working on blades, there’s not a lot of stuff that’s standardized.
Unfortunately. Unfortunately. And that’s something you’re working on. Yes. So let’s, we’ll switch topics a little bit. Alfred, the, how I originally got in contact with you was Blade Repair Academy. Tell us about Blade Repair Academy.
Alfred Crabtree: All right. Blade Repair Academy is a startup that my partners and I began about a year ago in the, if you build it, they will come.
There we go. Thing, we’re grinders we’re field techs, a couple of us. And we know what you need to be able to do the work. And, I contend that it’s the grinder that you have to unlock, because everything depends upon the grinder, and in my opinion, existing training programs don’t give you enough time or enough scale and size to really reflect an analog to what you do in the field.
So that’s what we are doing. We have simulated lightning strikes that people repair. We have a learning management system, it’s a database, and we have people They fill out a report while they do their repair. Just like you’re in the field, but in a controlled environment. Exactly. And since every repair panel and damage is the same, then we can compare everybody’s work.
Yeah. Everybody has to take out a certain size of core. And so now I have a rubric to grade on and we now have insight. And one of the main things that I offer as a product is a vetting service. Where that’s huge. If you’re going to hire somebody who has skills. You have no way to prove it until he’s been out in the field and you get some feedback.
And that may cost you half your season if the guy’s not really what he thinks he is.
Joel Saxum: And monetarily, if you have someone up there doing poor quality repairs. Wait, that could screw you. You could lose contracts. For sure. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of let alone the safety and other things, but the quality side of it.
That’s a different, whole different game.
Alfred Crabtree: I think that’s the main reason why people hold back from growing their teams, because they’re afraid of losing quality control, because they can’t control the input. They can’t control what’s coming in. So we vet, we, let me just finish here. Yeah.
We vet people. They can come and execute one of these repairs with just work instructions, no prompts under the instruction and then. They’ll complete it and you’ll have a report and you’ll know what they’re capable of.
Joel Saxum: I think that’s huge. You’re, so you’re saying one of the things, of course, full training programs here, but we’re, you’re talking, we can vet people.
If you’re an ISP and your engineering staff doesn’t have the time, or you don’t have the time in HR, whatever you want to grow your team, send a couple of guys over to Alfred that he can vet them. QC them, make sure they are what they say they are. That’s right. That’s one thing. The other concept that you and I have talked about off air a little bit as well is the idea of upskilling people to execute on some of these serial defects in the fleet.
Now, so this is a concept and it’s a little bit, it was new to me, but man, you thought through it, you’ve got it. But the concept in my mind is, hey, we know we have this OEM that has this issue and here’s the work instruction. Send me the guys. I’ll have them go through the work instruction.
They’ll be stamp approved from Blade Repair Academy. They can execute on the COD effect. Get them out there and get them fixing it.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s right. And we can tailor the curriculum and the sample board to the layup that they’re facing. We can simulate the damage that they’re facing. And of course, we can quickly validate. and or supplement and, Train them till the point that they can go out and do that work. And with a finite amount of money set back to solve these problems that are, we know are going to continue to recur. We have to come up with the system to rapidly deploy and take care of these things while they’re sitting in a yard and not deal with them when they’re up on the turbine.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. We’ve got to keep those cranes moving. Yeah. And at the same time, so we’ve got that we’re talking about getting serial defects fixed and then we’re going to go into the field and we’re going to put complete net new capacity. So new blade repair technicians that maybe haven’t been on a blade before.
We’ll get them through your program so that we can see if they have the skills to go do it. Instead of finding out half of the season that they don’t.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s right. We believe that, you’ve got a five year lifespan with a technician. Let’s plan on that. Okay. And if we do that, we know that it’s probably wise to front load the training so you can get productivity out of these people really early, right?
And the matrix of skills and the things that you vet for, you’re going to vet for safety. The whole industrial training thing, the GWO path. Love it. Great. Then you’re going to vote. Then, in my opinion, you should vet for composite skills. Okay. Because you can be a good technician who can grind, but maybe.
You’re not going to be able to work at height, but we don’t need to throw that technician away. We need, there’s plenty of work on the ground, especially in the serial flaw world. So then you vet for height and then we all, and any employer has to vet for character and that’s especially important in this game because you’re putting a guy on a rope or in a basket, hundreds of miles from your office who is there to self manage.
And So on top of all these things we gotta have, it’s a brutal, it’s a brutal regime to get a good blade
Joel Saxum: deck.
And the existing issue today, or one of the existing issues, this is everything you just explained. And now that person is being asked many times to train someone in the field. And it’s uncontrolled at that time it’s hey, the weather just broke, we just got up on a blade, I don’t have time today.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s a very common place. It’s the standard, and the field is a very hard place to trade. If you’re up on blade, you have very little cognitive bandwidth left. And you’re under pressure to perform. You’ve been on standby for five days. And guess what? You may be really good at your job, but that doesn’t mean you’re a teacher.
Exactly. In fact, the techs who really crush it are usually head down, blinders on, don’t meet anyone. Yeah. For sure. Extreme stuff. It’s and it’s a, I think we also need to emphasize this is a craft, okay? We’re not swapping out parts. Yeah, we have it’s science meets art. It is. You have to make choices about what you remove from the blade.
Joel Saxum: And then you, and by the way, it’s moving and it’s bucking and you’ve got a 36 grade video where you’re showing the guy and all the different, I was just walking through the steps of the video you showed during your presentation and the clip rope clip, rope. I’m like, just remembering that sequence of how to keep yourself safe up on the ropes.
You haven’t even got the grinder out. Yeah. And so to be turned on, to be switched on, you’ve got to be, into what you’re doing at that point. Otherwise, it’s unsafe otherwise. So if you’re being asked to do too much in the field, it’s tough. So in my opinion, and this is why I’ve gravitated towards your message and talking with you is we know we need new net capacity right now, dedicated blade composite repair, training facilities and entities.
Some ISPs are doing it internally. Yes. But there isn’t a facility that has the push that you have, that I see.
Alfred Crabtree: I scaled up to a facility that I could easily put 200 people, even 400 people a year through my program. There, I, not many companies are going to invest like I did to build a facility that is that deluxe for the four to eight people that they’re going to, they’re going to train.
And then in the start of the season, the manager is going to take his hat off and they’re going to put his training hat on and he’s going to be doing double duty. You’re going to get it done. And then you’re going to go back to managing the season starts and you trained for, and you had tried it three and in the middle of the season, you can’t adapt, but if you use a third party like blade repair Academy, you can hire that guy, we can vet them.
You can put them right out. Good to go and you can scale up and down. It’s a paradigm shift, but I think people should look into it.
Joel Saxum: One of the cool things that you told me about your facility and the Blade Repair Academy thing that you’ve got going on is everybody in the industry seems to be on board.
So you’re getting even materials companies donating some stuff like, Hey, here’s some new material. Here’s this, we’re looking at doing a, a U UV cure kind of demos and these kinds of things with this product. And so when a technician comes through there, they get exposure to a lot of the state of the art technologies and stuff.
Alfred Crabtree: That’s going, yeah, We really want to be a technology demonstration center and part of it is just. That I’m a kid and I love playing around with this stuff and experimenting, but it’s also about finding best practices and new uses. We have, we have legacy chemicals and we have legacy protocols because we’re afraid.
To try different things in the work environment. And so I’ve got a lab where you can come and it’s okay. If you mess up the repair, you learn from the mess ups more than you do the good stuff. Yeah. Let’s try this new chemical, the UV cure systems out there. Game changer, cutting cure times from six hours to 20 minutes.
Yeah. We’re watching it right down here. They’re doing it on the floor here. They’re doing it on the floor here with no VOCs one part systems. The suppliers are coming up With solutions and I’ve had a couple come to me and ask for our feedback because they don’t know about The field scenario and they’ve changed formulations based upon our feedback and changed packaging.
Yeah. We’re grateful. Yeah. Obviously it makes sense to, for suppliers to put their products in our hands and get them in the hands of people. And I think that’s win for everybody. It’s very, we’re out, we’re agnostic and we take all comers and we’ll, we’ll do LEP demos and put a few stuff, a few products up against each other.
Yeah. Infusion is a new technology that we’re exploring. We’re having actually a couple of clinics Thursday and Friday and Monday and Tuesday. So I’m always open to hear from anybody and get visits from anybody. We know we have to validate our claims and we have to be vetted and we’re new in the industry.
So I encourage anyone who wants to talk about it or come down and see what we do. It’s definitely unique.
Joel Saxum: I like it. I like the whole concept and I think that the industry needs it. Not only our U. S. Sorry, but globally it’s needed. Yes. We need capacity everywhere.
Alfred Crabtree: It’s amazing the Interest I’m getting on LinkedIn
Joel Saxum: from all over the world.
Yeah. Let’s touch on that okay So we’ve went through the message about what technicians are going through in the field we’ve talked about Blade Repair Academy, some of your initiatives and the things you’re doing. The last thing here, how do people get a hold of you? They want to get a hold of Blade Repair Academy, how do they do it?
Alfred Crabtree: bladerepairacademy.com I’m alfred.crabtree@bladerepairacademy.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. The video we were talking about is on YouTube, if you look up my name. And the commute, it’s just it’s the rappel from the nacelle down to A damage area and what it takes and what we’re trying to what I was trying to convey yesterday to people was, you know There’s a human being who has to get here in these conditions doing these Exerting himself or herself to this degree.
Joel Saxum: So keep that in mind when you’re, hiring or firing or Commending or and when you need someone vetted send them to Blade Repair Academy.
Alfred Crabtree: Yeah send them to us. We can really help you make sure your workforce is dialed in
