75th Anniversary |
Once in hydro, always in hydro
Barbara Fischer-Aupperle, co-founder of the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition, looks back at over 33 years of her career in the hydropower equipment supply industry
SINCE I STARTED OUT in the hydropower equipment supply industry, IWP&DC magazine has always been around.
Above: A rare view of two women on an Indian hydro plant construction site in 2012. Barbara Fischer-Aupperle has used her own experience to go on to mentor and coach younger women and to encourage them to go their own way in the hydropower industry
Below right: Itaipu distributor during erection in 2005
Below: Barbara Fischer- Aupperle at the first ever Hydropower Sustainability Protocol Workshop organised by the IHA in 2006
If I’m honest, I came into hydropower without any idea about what it was. I’d studied English and Russian translation as my first university degree and was hired as an assistant to international sales to overcome communication barriers between sales, engineering, and other related departments of what was then called the ‘turbine division’ in the company. In this assistant role, I was to support all requests from sales, or requests for sales, while the sales engineers were out in the field. Being a central hub I knew where everybody was, which projects were on the horizon and which activities around bidding and customer relations had to be done. This – over time and almost naturally – also led to more marketing and communications-related tasks, the production of news for employees’ as well as for customers’ newsletters and the development of more modern communications materials and contributions, which partially substituted the purely technical articles and papers by engineers for engineers. Some of the memorable projects I’ve worked on certainly include Itaipu in its construction phase. This was the mega project during my first years, as well as all the other Brazilian projects built during that time. Later on, Three Gorges came into play with lots of delegations from China touring the mainly Europe-based equipment manufacturers. With these two projects alone, the industry pushed the boundaries of what was possible in terms of machine size and performance capacity. I still feel lucky to have witnessed the breaking of these records, and my own company – Voith Hydro – always helped to develop and drive these advances and the magnitude of these machines.
I had the opportunity to visit both sites later on when they were operational. At Itaipu, I even had the impressive opportunity to wander through the spiral case of one of the two machines, added on later, together with some communications colleagues from other Voith divisions. They were absolutely speechless, while I was simply proud. These engineers could push the limits towards larger machines and higher installed generation capacity, but the precision still had to be maintained at the same time. So, the very large and the very tiny do meet within the products of this industry in an admirable way.
Growing paperwork One noteworthy aspect of my work was the
experience that paperwork grew tremendously over a five-to-ten-year period. While a prequalification from a customer originally was like a thin book, and the offer submittal may have been three centimeters thick, this grew in many cases to a thick book and three to five thicker books for the offer, resulting in dozens of binders with the documentation required to submit a bid. Even with the advent of computers later on, there was no way to achieve a dreamed-of paperless office. The best picture we ever took was the 99 binders per copy for the Three Gorges project: somebody climbed up the hill of boxes with around 500 binders in total to sit on them and have the photo taken, after weeks of compiling and working in the biggest meeting room that the company could provide at the time. On another note, I was also witness to the concentration of the suppliers’ market when many companies in Europe merged or were subject to acquisitions. I was part of a couple of historical movements here and involved in the extensive due diligence processes required.
38 | May 2024 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
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