Operations Energy & utilities

Field-service productivity program for 900 engineers

Kestrel's 900 field engineers completed barely three jobs a day and safety incidents were rising. We rebuilt scheduling, parts and permits around the engineer and lifted output by 27%.

Client: Kestrel Energy Duration: 10 months Year: 2023
The challenge

Busy days, few finished jobs.

Kestrel Energy maintains wind, gas and grid assets across the UK with 900 field engineers. Engineers drove long distances, waited for parts and paperwork, and one visit in five ended without a fix.

  • 3.1jobs per engineer per day
  • 22%of visits needed a second trip
  • +15%recordable safety incidents in two years

Earlier efficiency drives had been run from head office and were seen on the ground as pressure to cut corners. Engineers were skeptical, and the safety record made the board wary of anything that looked like speeding up.

The program had to raise productivity and improve safety at the same time — or it would not get past the unions or the board.

Our solution

Built in the van, not in head office.

We started by riding along with engineers, then designed every change with a working group of 30 engineers, supervisors and safety reps.

  1. 01

    Ride along

    Our team shadowed 40 full shifts across six regions and logged where every hour went — 27% of it was waiting.

  2. 02

    Schedule smarter

    Skills-based routing, pre-packed parts kits and two-hour arrival windows put the right engineer at the right asset with what they need.

  3. 03

    Build safety in

    A digital permit-to-work and a five-minute pre-job check replaced paper forms, so safety steps became faster to follow, not slower.

The results

Safer and more productive.

Twelve-month results across all six regions, reviewed by Kestrel's operations and HSE directors.

+27 % Jobs per day

From 3.1 to 3.9 per engineer.

−38 % Repeat visits

First-time-fix rate rose to 86%.

−44 % Safety incidents

Recordable incidents over 12 months.

$21 M Annual value

Capacity redeployed to new maintenance contracts.

“Our engineers were skeptical of another program from head office. Corwell rode in the vans with them and built the changes around what they saw. Timelines slipped once, but they owned it and recovered fast.”
Aisha Rahman VP Operations, Kestrel Energy