Lucy Craig

Director, Growth, Innovation & Digitalization

The driving element throughout my career has been to work for a more sustainable future and make a positive impact on the environment. When I graduated from university, there were not many opportunities in renewable energy, but after a few years of gaining broader engineering experience – and a very formative year doing voluntary work in Nicaragua – I was lucky to land a job as an electrical engineer at Wind Energy Group (WEG) in London, part of the Taylor Woodrow construction group. Wind energy at that time was in its infancy. WEG had just commissioned a wind farm in California and was developing a novel concept 2-bladed wind turbine, which we then installed in the first UK wind farms. I thoroughly enjoyed being part of a team taking innovative technology through early stage testing to what we would now call a “minimum viable product”.

Wind development at that time was dependent on government support and in the UK, after some initial public investments, the prospects for building more wind farms were not promising. So, when I was offered the opportunity of a research post at Manchester University related to the electrical design of wind turbines I decided to take it. The research work was carried out jointly with Garrad Hassan (GH), a small wind energy consultancy which had been established by Andrew Garrad and Unsal Hassan, who had also worked at WEG before leaving to start their own business. I was offered a job with Garrad Hassan after I completed my PhD – one of 30 employees, and one of seven in the Glasgow office. It was another exciting time: while the UK wind industry at that time was almost non-existent, Garrad Hassan had already gained an international reputation and I worked in projects across the globe: supporting customers with their early repowering projects in California, new wind farms in Italy, Portugal and the Canary Islands, a research project with one of the major OEM’s (now part of Siemens Gamesa) in Denmark and for a World Bank funded project in Cape Verde. Apart from the astonishing speed of developments in wind turbine technology since those early wind farms, information and communication technology has also developed very rapidly. At that time, mobile phone coverage was limited or non-existent at remote wind farm locations and often the only way of communication back to the Glasgow office during my travels, whether from the mountains of Portugal or the beaches of Cape Verde, was using the hotel’s fax machine in the evenings. So, if I had a question I wanted to ask someone back in the office, it would take at least 24 hours to get the answer – very different from today!

Wind energy in Spain started taking off in the late 1990’s and I was asked to move to Spain to set up the first office for GH outside the UK. That early work experience in Nic-

There is an African proverb which I often repeat to myself, especially when it takes longer than I would like to get things done: “If you want to go fast – go alone; if you want to go far – go together.”

aragua where I had learned Spanish had given me a strong qualification for the role! I was very happy living in Glasgow, but I agreed to go to Spain for six months. Those six months ended up becoming 16 years. The wind industry was growing fast in Spain and there was plenty of work in supporting the building of new wind farms across the country. Supported by government incentives, there were many large portfolios being sponsored by major Spanish players – it was a fascinating time to be working in the Spanish wind sector. I am also very proud that most of the team that I recruited in those early days are still with DNV and are leading our very successful renewables business in Iberia and Latin America. As the team in Spain grew, we also started to work in Portugal and established an office there. Our customers in Spain and Portugal then started exploring opportunities in Mexico, Chile and Brazil and so we followed them and set up offices there. With the acquisition of Garrad Hassan by GL in 2009, the team in Spain expanded further with the Measurements team in Madrid. The solar industry was also growing rapidly in Spain in the early 2000’s. Our customers increasingly were expanding into solar power and so we started to develop a business in Solar. Following the merger with DNV, I developed the new solar strategy for DNV GL – our acquisition of GreenPowerMonitor in 2016 was an important element of meeting those strategic goals.

My move to Spain was also important for me at a personal level. I am a keen mountaineer and from Zaragoza it is a 2-hour drive to the highest mountains in the Pyrenees. I discovered the pleasures of mountaineering in good weather – battling the elements is usually a factor of hillwalking in Scotland. I met my husband, Fernando, when I started ski-mountaineering the first winter I was in Zaragoza. Our son Daniel also enjoys mountaineering and now aged 11, he is starting to set the pace when we are in the outdoors.

After the merger between DNV and GL, I was offered a post as Director of Technology & Innovation at Energy’s headquarters in Arnhem, and I moved to the Netherlands. My responsibility expanded beyond renewables to managing our innovation portfolio and service governance also in power grids and energy management. Solar and wind technology are now relatively mature and cost competitive – it is now more economic to build a new wind or solar plant than a new fossil-fueled power station in most parts of the world – and with the scaling of renewables, integration in the power system became the key challenge. So, understanding how we can best support our customers in this important area was a new and inspiring goal. I was fortunate that my family was willing to move to the Netherlands and we swapped our mountain boots and skis for bicycles. As a family we have explored many different parts of the Netherlands on the excellent network of “fietspaden”, as well as making the most of living in Central Europe to take our bikes several times to Germany and enjoy some mountaineering trips to Norway and the Alps.

With the power sector now on a track towards decarbonization, the next big challenge is decarbonization of the entire energy value chain, including energy use in transport, industry and buildings. I am excited by the new opportunities which open up to us now in Energy Systems, combining the capabilities we have from the oil & gas sector with our experience in power & renewables to support our customers in tackling the transformation of the energy sector. In my new role as Director of Growth & Innovation, there are four pillars to my responsibilities: enabling growth and scaling of new business through product and market ventures; improving automation, efficiency and better use of data across all our services, as the foundation for developing more digital business models; investing in customer-centered innovation, through applying the principles of the innovation framework and above all, ensuring quality and health and safety in all we do.

One of the key elements of my role is collaboration. I have a relatively small team, which works across Energy Systems through our collaboration networks –through the service area and innovation networks, and in QHSSE. There is an African proverb which I often repeat to myself, especially when it takes longer than I would like to get things done: “If you want to go fast – go alone; if you want to go far – go together”. •

Hiking with the family, enjoying mountaineering in good weather.