Max Joel Skerratt Email & Phone Number

Otago, New Zealand

Generation Site Leader – Otago:• Responsible for the operations and maintenance of Manawa Energy’s generation sites in the Otago Region. This consists of 8 Power Stations (110MWe capacity), associated water storage and conveyance infrastructure including approximately 50km of High Voltage lines (33kV and 110kV).• Managing a team of 8 staff and multiple contractors working across the region. Developing and implementing key performance indicators to evaluate the team's performance and the site's overall productivity. Ensuring training and competency of operational staff including permitting and work control procedures are adhered to.• Formulating and overseeing the budget for the site, ensuring effective allocation of resources and cost control measures.• Responsible for generation availability including outages across the fleet. In two years of operation improved forced outage factors and failed starts by at least 10% by focussing on root cause analysis.• Oversaw two station major overhauls including generator, protection, PLC and major machinery replacements.• Collaborating with cross-functional teams across Manawa Energy to streamline processes, troubleshoot issues, and ensure seamless operations within the generation site.• Driving strategic initiatives to enhance sustainability practices, reduce environmental impact, and meet regulatory compliance requirements.• Regularly communicate with senior management, stakeholders (including iwi), and regulatory bodies to provide updates on site operations, performance metrics, and strategic initiatives.

Cornwall, England, United Kingdom

A ground-breaking, high profile and innovative geothermal energy project located at the Eden Project in the UK. The Eden Project houses the largest indoor rainforest in the world and is one of the UK’s largest tourist destinations. The project scope is to drill and test a 5,000m deep well, supply geothermal heat via a heat main and produce electricity using the binary cycle. Operational Management and Execution:Creating the ongoing operational strategy, interviewing, employing and managing multiple staff (Supervisors, Support Engineers and Site Managers) for execution and management of contractors during the drilling and physical works. Development of multinational team amidst Covid 19 pandemic ensuring positive team dynamics and communication. Overall responsibility for the site operations: 30-person site presence, 24-hour operation.Project Management:Full responsibility for setting the Eden Geothermal (EGL) project in motion including setting up a team for delivery and implementing best practice processes. Setting up and completing a complex procurement process with ‘invitation to tender’ documents and vendors: contracts ranged from £500k to £9m (GBP). Producing and executing contracts from first principles using an external lawyer. Final decision maker for negotiation and awarding of contracts. Employing contractors and equipment suppliers from across the world in order to deliver the project. Strategy formulation of future grid connection including communication with utilities companies, private wire opportunities and electrical engineers. Full budget formulation, tracking and spend responsibility for a 20m (GBP) budget.Health & Safety:Responsibility for implementing of a full site Health, Safety and Environment Management System. Establishing a safety culture at a high-risk site across multiple contractors and staff. Ensuring safety is at the forefront of all operational activities.

Taupo, New Zealand

Business Improvement Manager:Internally seconded into Contact Energy’s Sustainability and Innovation team for a 12 month period in order to drive a continuous improvement (CI) agenda across the operational business. • Coordinated with engineering, operations and maintenance teams to execute the plant operational improvements, achieving a 2% increase in plant availability rate.• Enhanced maintenance efficiency through process improvements, achieving an overall reduction in unscheduled maintenance hours.• Facilitating CI workshops across the operational business, engendering a culture of trust and openness required to drive improvement.• Liaising internally with the leadership team, managers, technical specialists, engineers and operational technicians. • Undertaking business cases and presenting to the leadership team. Including financial and social benefit, budget, project and execution risk analysis, optioneering and rationale for preferred solution.• Communicating with business partners ensuring existing industrial client relationships and contracts are fit for purpose and both parties are benefiting from the relationship. Key Achievements:• Identified an opportunity to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions at one of Contact Energy’s geothermal plants using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Sought technical advice from industry specialists including Auckland University, GNS and Iceland. Involved Contact Energy geochemists, reservoir engineers and plant specialists in order to complete a high-level feasibility study.

Wairakei Geothermal Power Station, Taupo, New Zealand

Responsible for the reliability and maintenance of 3 geothermal Power Stations (11 shafts) and their respective steamfields with an installed capacity of around 200MWe.Leadership:• Leading a cross-functional team of technicians, and support staff maintaining and operating multiple geothermal plants, achieving optimal efficiency, safety, and performance.• Leading and managing large outages and shutdowns including scoping, planning and execution to ensure plant is available when required. Managed the Wairakei A&B station and steamfield 4 yearly outage consisting of multiple generator and turbine overhauls, pipeline maintenance and PECPR approvals. Outage delivered on time and budget. • Building and promoting Contact Energy’s ‘generative safety culture’. Ensuring Safety is at the forefront of all operations with all staff, suppliers and contractors. Leading investigations and ‘learning teams’ in order to ensure the team learn and improve from incidents.Maintenance Management:• Preparing, managing and tracking an OPEX budget of approximately $8 million and a CAPEX budget of $4 million. KPIs met or exceeded within all years.• Managing planned maintenance outages and reliability in order to set and stay within the availability factor for each station. • Key involvement with undertaking the Geothermal Strategic Asset Management Plan formulation and role out aligning with ISO 55000.• Daily interaction with operations and trading ensuring optimisation of resources and generation plant in order to gain maximum generation from the steam available.Safety:• Key involvement with many aspects of Contact’s Operational Safety Improvement Programme (OSIP). The process uses a change management approach to ensure alignment across the business.• Major Accident Accident Hazard (MAH) Assessment and Reduction. Heavily involved in identifying, quantifying and mitigating Contact’s MAH risk at geothermal.

Wairakei Geothermal Power Station

Programme Manager:Employed to lead the delivery of CAPEX projects at Geothermal:• Formulating, planning and reporting on the yearly CAPEX budget for geothermal, a spend of $20million with approximately 150 discreet projects. Utilising qualitative and quantitative risk assessment techniques to rank and prioritise projects for inclusion in the budget. • Preparing and presenting business cases for projects to be undertaken, including financial modelling, options analysis and risk assessment.• Managing the scoping, concept, detailed design and construction of projects which include mechanical, structural, process, electrical and control.• Ensuring ‘safety in design’ principles are adhered to and that hazard identification, risk assessment and mitigation are undertaken and the right tools (HAZOP/HAZID, LOPA, SIL etc.) are used throughout the project liflecycle.• Leading the tender process for Capital Expenditure Projects including tender document formulation, tender evaluation and award.• Communication, negotiation and management of contractors ensuring best price and value are obtained.• Investigating operational events and defects, assisting with any project work carried out to rectify those defects.Key Achievement:Recognising, evaluating, developing, obtained funding and project managed an idea to save steam at the Wairakei plant by installing vacuum pumps to remove Non-Condensable Gases (NCGs). This was a steam saving of around 5MW equivalent. The project cost was an $11 million CAPEX cost with a payback of around 2.5 years. I took the project from initial business case through concept design, FEED, detailed design, tendering, procurement and execution. It was the ideal time to undertake the project, soon after delivery the consent conditions for steam take from the reservoir decreased which put even more emphasis on steam saving. The project was the winner of the 2018 IPENZ Gold Award of Excellence.

Queenstown, Nz

Program ManagerSought by Aurecon to manage the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) CAPEX contract. A framework contract working in partnership with the council including; asset review, identifying renewal projects, obtaining approval, management of the design and construction process. $50M capital value annually;• Overall responsibility for the delivery of the contract. Liaising internally with the QLDC Head of Asset Management, ensuring projects are prioritised and delivered as required by the programme. • Management of resources based across the country in order to ensure timely delivery of project designs.• Risk and financial management. Establishing KPI’s.• Undertaking commercial contract formulation for projects. Contract management of works ensuring work is completed as per the contract, on time and budget.• Overall management of risk assessment and mitigation for the programme ensuring key risks are monitored and controlled effectively.

Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Programme and Key Account Manager for Masters Services Agreement to exclusively provide Nationwide Engineering Services to a major petrochemical company. Responsibilities include:• Managing and executing multiple projects simultaneously while directing, scheduling, and utilizing various teams and resources across several business units nationwide.• Direct line management of a team of five engineers and scientists located across the country.• Building and maintaining strong client relationships. Attending progress meetings with the client, resolving contract issues and ensuring KPI’s are met. • Estimating, pricing and budgeting ensuring targets are met and exceeded.• Ensuring project deadlines are met and aspects of risk and quality are maintained. Setting targets and ensuring the team is working and communicating effectively.• Full accountability and ownership for identifying project risks and consenting issues.

Reading, England, United Kingdom

Engineering consultancy. Key involvement with the the strategy and growth of the company from 6 engineers to a team of 30 people on exit. Duties included employing and line management of a team of 6 site engineers. Developing new business. Ensuring budgets were set and achieved. Managing clients expectations. Setting up systems and processes for delivery of work. Proposal writing. Undertaking technical work with associated report writing.

London, England, United Kingdom

Mouchel Parkman are a large Engineering Consultancy: Managing large scale geo-environmental risk investigations including soil and water treatment for a well known utility supplier with a large portfolio of industrial sites. Duties include: procurement of contractors, managing contractors on site, factual and interpretative report writing.

Project Management Professional (Pmp)

Chartered Engineer (C.Eng)

Bachelor Of Engineering (B.Eng.), Environmental Engineering