Blade Repair Academy: Tackling the Human Challenges in Blade Repair

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. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com 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.