An Expert’s Insight on Root Cause Analysis

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week, Allen and Joel talk to Jonathan Zalar of IWTG Consulting about the complicated RCA process. With 20+ years of experience, Zalar details OEM investigations like analyzing turbine data, assessing damage on-site, and convening engineering teams to determine causes. By understanding the inner workings of the OEM process, operators can get their turbines back up and running faster with less of a struggle. Website: https://www.iwtgconsulting.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonzalar/ Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Our guest is Jonathan Zalar managing partner of IWTG Consulting, and IWTG is based in South Carolina. In the United States, Jonathan has a long career in the wind industry, working for 22 years with GE 13 years with GE Vernova specifically, Jonathan has a wealth of knowledge from both his work in the field and in the engineering offices. He's a mechanical engineering major and also holds an MBA. So I put you in a very select class, Jonathan, which we're going to tap on here. Jonathan, welcome to the program. Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys taking the time. Allen Hall: There's not a lot of engineers that go after their MBA and then stick to engineering. They tend to go to MBA and they go into the business world and have a nice comfy office and you took the other route. Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I went right into my MBA after my undergrad. Guess I want to stay in college a little longer. Joel Saxum: Yeah, that doesn't make you a bad person, okay? I wish I was still there. Allen Hall: Jonathan, you have a really a wealth of knowledge here on what happens in the field because you're out there doing it and interacting with the engineering groups that were doing the design work and support work at their offices. And one of the issues that Joel and I get wrapped into a lot is RCA's. And people ask us about this all the time. And we were just at an insurance symposium a week or two ago, Joel and I were, and everybody has a different perspective of what actually happens and what an OEM does behind the scenes, because there's a lot of things that happen behind the curtain that unless you really are on the inside, you just don't know. But there's a lot of good positive things that an OEM is doing during an RCA. So I just like to walk through what happens during an RCA. If you had a blade issue out in the field and you call the OEM, what typically, what typical things happen there? And maybe you can just walk us through what that process is. Jonathan Zalar: When something like that happens, it's like a major event and GE and other OEMs have protocols in place, first of all, to ensure safety, right? Is everybody okay? And then, then it's like, all right, now it's time to put your CSI hat on and go investigate. Joel Saxum: Horatio Zalar, is that what it is? Jonathan Zalar: While this is all happening, while you're working with the customer, it'd be like, hey, can we come here? We're going to send, these experts out there to go look at whatever it is, a blade, for example. The teams are also looking at the data because when a, event happens, there's data collected on the turbine. There's engineers looking at that data, trying to understand,