From Rig to Reef: Grant's transition to offshore wind
Grant Garden is a Control Room Manager for Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm, which is Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm and has the deepest fixed bottom foundations of any wind farm in the world.
Hear more about why he decided to switch to a low carbon career.
What did you do in your former role, and why did you transition to renewables?
Prior to working at Seagreen I worked in the oil and gas industry for around 11 years, working on offshore rigs within the production room. This involved the safe and efficient running of the platform, maximising production whilst always operating the site as safety as possible; like what we do at Seagreen.
I was looking for something new, and had been keeping up to speed with how the wind and renewables industries were booming. When I saw the job at Seagreen advertised, I jumped at the chance. It seemed like the role had a lot of similarities to what I had been doing offshore but with the excitement of a new industry with a real buzz around it.
What skills from your former role did you find most transferable?
Although the two industries are very different, the way that big sites and plants operate and are maintained share lots of similarities and processes, so the move to renewables wasn’t totally alien. The roles I did previously meant that I was used to doing a safety role, safe system of work processes, controlling/prioritising works, coordinating teams and control room operations, which are similar here. There are still a lot of the finer details that are different in this industry, but that’s been the good thing with moving over, the general way of operating follows the same premise but there’s also loads of interesting new things to learn and get involved with.
What advice would you give?
I think the main thing is to not be scared to make a change and be out of your comfort zone. Having moved over to renewables I was surprised how many transferable skills there have been, and how people from other industries can share their experience and pass on knowledge from other ways of working, which has hopefully added some value. The main advice would be to go for it.
