60 second interview

What’s your background – I spent a few years working at Bristol Flying Centre and then as a Marine Engineer for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary before joining the team in 2006. I always knew that I wanted to work with aircraft, having been inspired by my Dad who was Chief Engineer for the unit.

Describe your daily routine –Flying Observers are responsible for all aspects of the patrol for that day including briefing the pilot on our area of operations, patrol planning, liaising with managers from across WPD and compiling patrol reports. Usually we do a five hour flying day split into two sorties, finishing with the completion of any post patrol admin. When tasked as Duty Observer we are responsible for the daily operations of the unit.

What’s the best part of the job - I really enjoy working in an airborne environment. It’s also very rewarding patrolling a line post fault and being able to pinpoint the cause of a power cut and help get the lights back on.

Tell us about the main challenges of the job – There’s a lot involved and being good at multi-tasking is essential. You have to be alert all the time - navigating, alerting the pilot to any hazards, checking for faults and logging updates accurately on the laptop at the same time takes quite a bit of practice.

What do you do out of work – Not surprisingly I love flying, so I took some lessons in my spare time and have now qualified as a private pilot. I try to get out a few times a month on local flights but it’s quite expensive.

Helicopter Unit capabilities:

• 11, 33 and 132kV routine patrols
• 11, 33 and 132kV emergency patrols
• Pre outage patrols
• Thermal patrols (infra-red)
• Severe weather response / network integrity checks
• Underslung load operations
• High definition photography of overhead assets
• Risk patrols (reporting land use)
• Tree resilience patrols

Simon Richards, Heli Unit Observer