Facilitating Change (UK) Ltd is delighted to be supporting Vattenfall’s stakeholder engagement activities in relation to its ground breaking hydrogen project which has been awarded £9.3m innovation funding from the ‘Net Zero Innovation Portfolio Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2’ fund by the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The funding will be used to develop the world’s first hydrogen-producing offshore wind turbine, with the 8MW hydrogen electrolyser sited directly onto an existing operational turbine at its test and demonstration wind farm in Aberdeen Bay.

The pilot project at Vattenfall’s Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm will be able to produce enough hydrogen every day to power a hydrogen bus to travel 15,000 miles. The hydrogen will be piped to shore at the Port of Aberdeen.

Work on the project has commenced, with the goal of first production as early as 2025.

The availability of large quantities of fossil-free hydrogen will play a key role in the decarbonisation of heavy industry (predominantly in steel, chemicals, and fertiliser production as well as refining), and heavy transport.

The project – ‘Hydrogen Turbine 1’ or ‘HT1’ – aims to be first project in the world to test the full integration of hydrogen production with an offshore wind turbine. HT1 will also map out development and consent processes for large-scale hydrogen projects co-located with offshore wind farms to speed up future development.

Facilitating Change’s Managing Partner, Tori McCusker, explains the company’s role in the project: “engaging with stakeholders is an important component in the consenting success of any significant development. This project is particularly interesting as we are bringing our experience in offshore renewables to help map out the consenting processes for new types of development relating to the generation of green hydrogen.”

Facilitating Change (UK) Ltd is delighted at Crown Estate Scotland’s decision to award the leasing rights to develop the 2 GW West of Orkney Windfarm to a consortium comprising Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, TotalEnergies and RIDG.  The successful consortium, known as Offshore Wind Power Limited, bid for the leasing rights through Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind offshore leasing process.   

Facilitating Change has been advising Offshore Wind Power Limited on their stakeholder engagement strategy during the ScotWind bidding process. Engagement with key regulatory and strategic stakeholders has already commenced and early discussions with community stakeholders will start soon.

The West of Orkney Windfarm will be located 30km off the west coast of Orkney.  The project, which aims to start producing renewable power by 2030, represents potentially more than £4 billion of investment and will make a significant contribution to meeting the country’s net zero climate targets.

As part of this development, the partners will unlock a £140m initiative to support the development of the local supply chain, including the enhancement of ports and harbour infrastructure in Orkney and Caithness. This will ensure high levels of local content and actively promote employment and innovation in the region.

Once built, the windfarm could also deliver renewable power to the Flotta Hydrogen Hub, a proposed large-scale green hydrogen production facility in Orkney.

Mike Hay, RIDG Director, said: “It’s fantastic that Crown Estate Scotland share our vision for the West of Orkney Windfarm, a project that has been designed specifically around this location to benefit local communities, transition Scottish workers from oil and gas into renewables, and to act as a catalyst for supply chain growth. Since submitting our bid we have continued to advance development and supply chain activities to ensure that we deliver on the objectives set out within it, and to maximise the economic opportunity from the expansion of offshore wind and green hydrogen in Scotland.”

Tori McCusker, Facilitating Change’s Managing Partner adds: “the conception of this project already represents a magnificent feat of visionary innovation and partnership working by the consortium. As a very small cog in the development of this project, we are delighted at the partners’ commitment to engage with all stakeholders in a meaningful and purposeful manner and to support small businesses within the supply chain.”  

we are delighted at the partners’ commitment to engage with all stakeholders in a meaningful and purposeful manner

Tori McCusker, Managing Partner, Facilitating Change (UK) Ltd

https://www.renaldi.com/touching-strangers/#2

Most public engagement activities start with a context of strangeness.  Not strange in the sense of being weird or peculiar but strange as in different or unknown. Stakeholders are typically strangers to us as facilitators as well as to each other, despite potentially having some shared interests. Engendering empathy and trust can be tricky when people don’t know each other and may be suspicious of conflicting agendas. How to overcome this strangeness offers a challenge for facilitators seeking to bring disparate parties together and ensure that all voices are heard.

Photographer, Richard Rinaldi’s, slightly surprising advice might be to ‘fake it until you make it’. Richard’s project, Touching Strangers, beautifully demonstrates how bringing together people with no prior connection can effectively engender empathy and concern between strangers with no obvious common interests. The resulting ‘family’ portraits are fascinating and tender but perhaps more astonishing is the change in the participants’ perceptions of each other.

“It was sort of awkward and but then sort of not” is the way Margaret described the experience. Her photograph appears to represent an intimate portrait of a fiercely protective mother in the embrace of her devoted daughters, Hunter and Abigail. They’d never met before but there is no hint or suggestion that this is merely three strangers faking it for effect. Reflecting on how the experience has changed her, Margaret concludes that “we’re probably missing so much about the people all around us”; a good lesson for all of us seeking to empathetically engage with strangers.

Poetry teacher, Brian, describes a more remarkable change in response to his experience of being photographed with 95-year-old retired fashion designer, Reiko. It’s evident that his reaction was a surprise to him too when he explains “I felt like I cared for her”. Caring for others’ experiences in the realm of public engagement is an excellent premise from which to start building relationships.

As professionals seeking to facilitate connections between stakeholders, ‘faking’ trust and kindness and encouraging people to give each other the benefit of the doubt could be a good way to get the rapport ball rolling. Approaching each conversation with sensitivity curiosity might allow us to ‘make’ that rapport into something real and meaningful.

1st October 2021

Today is a significant day for Facilitating Change. I step down as Managing Director and will be handing the reins to Victoria McCusker (Tori) who will become Managing Partner.
I wanted to thank everyone who has supported me on my journey over the last 18 years. I couldn’t have achieved it all without the support of clients, suppliers, friends and family.
I am moving onto a new position in a different organisation which I am very excited about. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks what that role is.
For the time being I wanted to wish Tori and Facilitating Change every success as she takes the business forward.
Chris

In October this year the Scottish government announced a ban on fracking due to the ‘overwhelming’ public opposition. The Scottish government‘s decision was driven by a public consultation which had been conducted, with a response of 60,535, of which 99% were said to be opposed to fracking.  This blog will look at the type of public consultation that was conducted and the questions that undertaking such an exercise generates.

What is fracking?

First things first, what is fracking?  Well, fracking is short for ‘hydraulic fracturing’ and is the process of “drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside” (BBC.co.uk).  The gas is used to generate electricity, as a source of heating and as a raw material for plastics. Scotland’s current supply of gas comes from the North Sea gas fields and imports of gas from countries like Russia, Qatar and USA.

Public consultation – The questions asked

The Scottish Government undertook a consultation (Talking ‘Fracking’: A Consultation on Unconventional Oil and Gas) from the 31^st January to the 31^st May 2017. The paper provided a summary of findings from commissioned studies and 10 open ended questions, there were no closed (tick box) questions. One example from the 10 questions was:

“What are your views on the potential social, community and health impacts of an unconventional oil and gas industry in Scotland?”

Range of collection mediums?

There was a dedicated website (Talking Fracking) set up for this consultation with further information about fracking in an easily accessible format and a link to the consultation paper and other online resources. There was also a group discussion pack available for community groups to download (including supporting information, information slides, hand-outs and a shortened version of the consultation questionnaire).  Some groups chose to create a petition and gain signatures based on their stance.

In the response to the consultation there was no mention of the output from the group discussions and it is unclear as to whether any of these group discussions actually took place.

Representative response?

A public consultation means that anyone can submit their view, including individuals, groups and organisations.

Does the output from this consultation represent the views of the Scottish public or only those groups involved in fracking or against it?

For a nationally important project did the Scottish Government employ the right mix of engagement methods to ensure that a representative mix of the Scottish population were engaged in the consultation?

Responses

On analysis of the output of the consultation responses were categorised by:

• standard campaign text responses (21,077);
• petition signatures (31,033); or
• own word responses (8,425).

Those who responded with a standard campaign response and other identical responses (petitions) made up 86% (52,110) of the responses. The remaining 14% were made up of substantive responses including non-standard campaign responses. Undertaking a consultation in this way can lead to selection bias and are notoriously unreliable, mainly due to the fact that those who do contribute are very different from those who don’t.  Therefore, the results tend not to be a true representative of the general population.

Engagement best practice would suggest that there should be a check at the end of the consultation to test whether those who took part in the engagement were representative of the wider community that was being engaged and also that there was a range of methods used that meant that the consultation was accessible to all including hard to reach groups. Should this process have been used on this consultation?

Scottish decision?

Surprisingly, not all results came from Scotland, only 88% did. 11% came from the rest of the UK and 1% from the rest of the world (based on those who left address details).  What should happen to responses that come from outwith an impacted area?

The overwhelming majority of the respondents were opposed to the unconventional oil and gas extraction (fracking) in Scotland, based on long-lasting negative effects on communities, health, environment and the climate. They were also unconvinced about any economic benefit it would bring and if it did it would be short-lived.

The right decision?

Did the Scottish Government make the right decision? Did they gather enough data and responses to make a representative overall population decision? Should they have conducted more public consultation events and or meetings to gather further responses? Should they have included a few quantitative questions for analysis?

Given that they have now consulted nationally on Fracking should they now be consistent in their approach and consult on all nationally important projects and be bound by the public response?

We would be delighted to hear your thoughts on this?

Analysis of response of the ‘Talking “Fracking”: A consultation on Unconventional Oil and Gas – Business & Energy, reference: www.gov.scot. ISBN: 978-1-78851-279-4

We worked with W2 training (Perth) to deliver and design a programme of Quality, Health, Safety & Environmental (QHSE) workshops for a major Oil and Gas Company. The programme was part of a world-wide programme of training that was mandatory for all their managers.

We took the outline design from the client and transformed the sessions into hands-on and engaging sessions. Each training session was held over 5 days and then in the later stages cut-down to 3 days.

TRAINING DELIVERY

We designed the training materials and trained the rest of the W2 team to deliver the course in Europe, Africa and the Former Soviet Republic.

In total Facilitating Change delivered:

• 38 training sessions;
• 176 training days;
• 1,408 training hours;
• 13 countries; and
• 5 Continents.

OUTCOME & FEEDBACK

The workshops had very clear measured outcomes. The feedback from the participants was collected at the end of the course. Each facilitator’s performance was measured and compared to the rest of the world-wide delivery team. Detailed feedback was used to inform changes to the course to ensure continuous improvement.

Each participant was tasked to create a set of actions to take back into the workplace. These were measured in terms of agreed savings in $Millions.

We worked on site at BP, Grangemouth (now Ineos) on several Information System related projects based in the procurement department when the site was going through considerable change from 2002 onwards. Part of the change was the creation of two separate companies.

The creation of Innovene as a new company was a great success. However, the change in company structure which took place required a lot of hard work to ensure that transition went smoothly. This was especially evident in the procurement department where three significant projects had to be successfully completed to ensure the site could continue to operate without disruption.

P2P TASKFORCE: PROJECT LEAD

The aims of the Grangemouth Purchase–to-Pay (P2P) taskforce were to review, and change, invoice processing in BP Chemicals to allow Invoice Processing to be undertaken centrally in the most cost effective and efficient manner. The main aim of the taskforce was to ensure that at least 90% of supplier invoices were processed first time without any BP intervention.

In addition, the Grangemouth Taskforce quickly identified a number of other assumptions and aims that were fundamental to the success of the project:

• The taskforce should aim to compliment the site’s cost agenda. Any processes developed should ensure that site users were controlling their own costs.
• Strive for 100% processing success (rather than the 90% target set by Project Target). The rate at the start of the project was 20%
• There had been concern that supplier relationships had been affected because of the transition to SAP. The aim of the project was to quickly ensure that suppliers were paid in a timely manner to re-build the site’s reputation with its suppliers.

VENDOR CLEAN-UP PROJECT

BP were using two inter-linked systems, SAP and Maximo, to control their purchase to pay system. Both systems held separate databases of Vendor details. The databases had been synchronised from the SAP master data.

The situation at Grangemouth was that the vendor data was not synchronised across the two systems. Both databases contained a significant number of records that were inactive. It was estimated that there were 5,500 vendor records in SAP of which only 1,000-1,500 related to live vendors.

Some of the BP Chemicals Vendor records were shared between sites. Therefore, any changes to Vendor records made by Grangemouth had to be co-ordinated between the relevant sites.

The target of the project was to ensure that the Accounts Payable invoice process was an automatic selection. Once the Vendor databases were improved there should be no manual intervention in the “purchase to pay” process. The process for amending Vendor records had to maintain the integrity of both databases on an ongoing basis.

An important outcome for the project was the creation and utilisation of correct effective and efficient processes.

CONTRACT SEPERATION

For Innovene to continue trading with its suppliers the wording of each supplier contract had to be checked, and where necessary changed. This took place under extreme time pressure. Over many years’ contracts had been entered into by different parts of BP and had been owned by different parts of the business. Grangemouth was part of a global programme designed to ensure that this exercise was completed prior to legal separation.

As well as identifying all supplier contracts that Grangemouth complex had entered, the programme had to make the necessary changes to the wording of contracts to ensure that trading could legally continue. This involved discussions with individual suppliers and BP lawyers to agree revised contract wording. In addition, letters were sent to over 2,000 suppliers to ensure that they were aware of new trading arrangements.

THE OUTCOME

Not only did the site complete the programme ahead of a very tight schedule, it was the first site globally to successfully complete the programme.

All three projects were delivered successfully.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“As a result of your work you are the best performing site globally” Programme manager, IBM

“Well done for a very good piece of work critical to legal separation.” European Procurement Director, Innovene

“This is a stupendous achievement, and a real testament to the professionalism and hard work of your team.” Chemicals Separation – Procurement Team Leader

“Achieving success in all three of these demanding projects required a huge effort from all of the procurement project team. The achievement was even more significant given that the procurement department was undergoing major organisational change at the same time to ensure that separate procurement functions were in place in BP FPS and Innovene at the time of separation.”

 Site – Procurement Team Leader

Grangemouth oil refinery complex located on the Firth of Forth in Grangemouth, Scotland.
One of the largest of kind in Europe.

Legislation

Over the years, a lot of time and effort has been focused on ensuring that legislation is in place to ensure that communities are effectively engaged before a planning application is submitted. We agree with this approach and understand that the principal of engaging early in the development process is to be encouraged. However, why do we only consider consultation before an application is submitted?

My Experience

I have recently experienced a developer appealing a local authority’s decision to refuse a planning application to build a significant housing development. As this application is in Scotland, a Scottish Government Reporter will now determine whether the initial decision should stand or be over-turned. What has become apparent throughout the appeal process is that there has been little, if no consultation, with the local community by the developer, or the reporter, throughout the appeal process. Surely effective consultation should be part of the appeal process.

Is it Time to Stop Focusing on Pre-Application Consultation?

Perhaps it is time to consider developing legislation to ensure that local communities are engaged throughout the life of a planning application; from the time that a project is publicly announced throughout all development stages such as construction, operation and decommissioning. After all it is the communities that need to live with the developments.

We would like to hear your thoughts and feelings around this subject, we are interested in hearing from all points of view.

Please email us or give us a call.

Chris Whitehead, Managing Director at Facilitating Change

Project: Glenouther Renewable Energy Park
Sector: Onshore wind
Size: 12 Turbines – 24MW
Consenting authority: East Ayrshire Council