At EET Fuels, we’re leading the energy transition by performing today, transforming for tomorrow, and delivering the UK’s first low carbon process refinery.
Our people are vital to achieving our ambition, and #redefined showcases the work that they are doing to deliver the fuels our community needs, now and in the future.
This month, we spoke to Mike Roberts, maintenance technician in the central workshop who has worked at EET Fuels for just over 11 years following a successful apprenticeship from 2009 to 2013.
How would you describe your day-to-day role?
As an experienced maintenance technician, I have become a senior member of the maintenance team in the central workshop. I have deputised for the coordinators and senior reliability technicians, and I have been involved in creating equipment repair plans for pumps and equipment.
In addition to pump overhauls and repairs, I am now involved in reverse engineering, CAD design and 3D laser scanning, which goes hand in hand with what I’m currently doing as part of my university degree. I hope to expand on this with some new projects I’d like to propose with metal 3D printing to assist the site in fighting obsolescence.
How has your role been redefined to support EET Fuels in reaching its target to reduce its carbon emissions by 95% by 2030?
Since starting university in 2021 to do my mechanical engineering degree I have been introduced to so many new technologies, some of which, I have identified as having major benefits to our site to improve efficiency and reduce downtime – especially as we fuel switch to low carbon hydrogen.
I created a project to implement this new technology to help us manufacture components, which we were previously unable to do on site, to speed up our current capabilities and to produce components to a better standard in shorter space of time.
The goal of this project is to save money, reduce downtime, improve efficiency and reduce waste.
What does success look like in your role?
Because I’ve been heavily involved in bringing these new technologies and machines to site, my aim right now is to get the project costs of £400,000 fully paid back. I then hope to gain support for my next project of metal 3D printing to further extend the site’s capabilities to reverse engineer components for our aging assets at the refinery.
So, we’re nearing the end of what I call phase one now, and ready to kick start phase two. The timing is working well because hopefully phase two will complete in my second to -last year of university and I can use that experience and knowledge. So phase one will be paid for, phase two will be being implemented and then I can use all of that data for my final year project at university.
As a team, how would you say you are contributing to the UK's energy transition?
Our team is a central workshop, so it’s all about getting things fixed in as short amount of time as possible and there are a lot of challenges around that, but essentially, we’re playing a supporting role to keep the site moving; fixing things and getting things back up and running, which is really important to the energy transition.
In your role, what do you think will be the key areas of focus or challenges in the next three years, and how do you plan to address them?
I think developing what I’ve started out doing with new technology and keeping it current. It’s almost becoming its own department now, so we need to build that up a bit more and educate people within the business about what we’re doing, so they can see the benefits.
I’m really lucky because we’ve had so much support and encouragement for these projects, especially from the senior team in India, so in terms of post-phase two, who knows, the sky’s the limit.
