A recent study by the UK government backed ORE Catapult has identified that recruitment and retention of skilled workers is the biggest barrier to progress in the UK’s offshore wind sector. The UK has a target to expand its offshore wind capacity from 15 GW to 50 GW by 2030. This rapid growth is also reflected in other parts of Europe, the US, and Asia. Rope access technicians are key to maintaining turbines, but the shortage of skilled workers is a major problem.
BladeBUG is a robotics company, developing and building hardware and software concurrently to automate a lot of the dull and dirty tasks on wind turbine maintenance. This will help alleviate the skilled worker shortage by providing a safer, cheaper, and reliable alternative.
Chris Cieslak is the Chief Executive Officer and is responsible for delivering the vision of automated wind turbine inspection and repair. As in most startups, members of the executive leadership team wear many hats throughout the day – HR, finance, facilities, and so on. As the product is developed from a minimum viable product to a full commercial offering Chris sees his role evolving to securing funding to enable the team to develop and improving the technology while transitioning from research and development to commercial activity. He is also in charge of promoting and selling the BladeBUG robot and securing revenue to become a fully sustainable, profitable business.
Chris recognises that BladeBUG is at a crucial point where they are moving to early-stage commercial activity. This transition affects everyone in the team and how they are going to work. The Shott Scale up Accelerator’s mentoring and workshops are tools that he thinks will expedite commercialisation and minimise mistakes or indecisions along the way. In terms of his personal development Chris recognises that he is now a CEO of a company with a team to manage. Having a good mentor will help with these areas where he feels less confident in the role. He also sees the support network being valuable support in how to formulate a convincing five-year strategy and finance model.
Over the next 12 to 18 months BladeBUG needs to be able to show a clear path to sales, revenue, and market adoption. This will involve growing the team with sales and field service technicians, and in parallel develop the next version of the robot. For them to be able to accelerate growth they need to have an extra funding round to cover the growth of the team, new premises, capital expenditure for the robots and marketing.
