Building a data-driven energy sector

Nic Granger (00:02)
I think good digital transformation is about enabling people to do things in a different way. So starting off with sort of the missional purpose of your organisation, looking at that, identifying things that people say are the worst part of their day,

everybody should be able to answer that question. What have you come home and you’ve complained to your other half or a friend about? Digital transformation solves those challenges.

Adam Sroka (00:43)
Hello and welcome back to the Hypercube podcast. I am joined today by Nic Granger, is Chief Information and Financial Officer for the North Sea Transition Authority. Nic, thank you very much for joining us here today. For those of the audience that maybe

don’t know you or don’t know an STA, would you like to just give us a brief intro?

Nic Granger (01:04)
Yeah, sure. Hi, Adam. Thanks for inviting me. So I am Nic Granger. I am Chief Information and Financial Officer of the North Sea Transition Authority, as Adam has said. And STA, if you haven’t come across us, we regulate and influence elements of offshore energy. that’s oil and gas, carbon storage and hydrogen transportation. And our role is essentially to steward the industry through certain milestones in the life cycle.

At moment, we’ve got three key priorities in doing that. Firstly, to ensure energy security and production. Secondly, to reduce emissions to decarbonize that supply as much as possible. And then thirdly, to accelerate the energy transition to net zero.

Adam Sroka (01:49)
mean, NSTA is really interesting because you’re in this unusual position of regulator innovation body. Talk me a little bit about how that plays out in practice and how organizations like NSTA can really accelerate collaboration within the industry.

Nic Granger (02:07)
Yeah, absolutely. So as a regulator, we’ve always taken a little bit of a different approach to perhaps some of the traditional regulatory bodies that you kind of come across. As part of that, we’ve put data at the heart of what we do. We know the data can add value. And I think that sums up our approach across regulation. So we’re here to steward the industry through those steps that they.

need to go through in terms of their licenses and we do that in a way that adds value to UK PLC. We have a balance between the of the carrot and the stick. We’re a regulator of the core so we need to make sure that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing but we also want to make sure that we’re doing that in the way that adds value as opposed to purely being a compliance organisation.

Adam Sroka (03:00)
Yeah, I guess like it’s an industry where there’s no one size fits all kind of cookie cutter data strategy or digital transformation template, right? Like it’s a complex place.

Nic Granger (03:08)
Absolutely, and I think some of the challenges of the organisations working in the UKCS are quite often international and they are headquartered around the world, so that also adds another layer in terms of approaches for digital and data. Quite often we’re working with a team that might not be the head office, that might not be setting those strategies and approaches, but what we’re trying to do is make sure that there is…

consistent approach. We’ve put legislation in place that enables us to do that and work with industry to collect data and make it available for wider use across the UK and internationally as well.

Adam Sroka (03:45)
And so just like, cause you’ve not always been in energy, right? You started in IT, worked in finance, accountancy. How did that like talk a little bit about your career journey and what kind of led you here? Cause it’s, I think it’s a really interesting story and some of the stuff you’ve achieved over the last few years has been really fun to follow.

Nic Granger (04:03)
Yeah, sure. And I know I’m a little bit different having that kind of the combination of the IT data and transformation and the finance side of things. So I kind of started off with an IT degree, couldn’t find an IT role when I left uni. So went into what some have heard me say before as the dark side of accountancy for a little bit, and then kind of flip backwards and forwards between data transformation and finance. And I think the one thing that underpins all of that is data.

So if you’re working in a finance role, essentially what you’re doing is you’re making data available for people to make decisions on. If you’re working in a technology or a direct data field, you’re doing the same. You’re enabling people to access data and make better decisions using that data. So the two sort of professional routes are not actually dissimilar in terms of what they’re trying to achieve. It’s just the way and the processes that you’re doing that are a little bit different to get to that route.

I’ve always found that they work really well together. Most of my career has been in public sector. I kind of fell into energy sector when I came into this role. I think seeing different sectors and different parts of industry, I think it’s really important when you’re working in that kind of transformation field and you’re trying to do things differently.

Adam Sroka (05:19)
And just interested in life because it’s a unique ish title, right? Does that dual responsibility kind of walk in the tightrope, give you that unique perspective that allows you to kind of do more at NSTA but also help others and advise? Like a lot of your work sits around that piece of driving better decisions through data. I mean, do you feel that, yeah, that you’re quite well placed seeing as much as you do?

Nic Granger (05:50)
think there’s always the conversation If you speak to CIOs about where should strategy around data sit, should it sit in the business or should it sit in the technology team? The kind of role I’m doing, think for me, it doesn’t sit in either or. It’s a collective responsibility delivering business strategy. You can use data and digital tools to enable that, but the outcomes you’re looking for are always aligned with the purpose of the organisation.

For me, doesn’t really matter what your job title is. It’s how you go about it, how you enable teams to be able to deliver what they need to deliver in terms of value for the outcomes that the organisation is looking for.

Adam Sroka (06:31)
Feel free to answer but do you feel like energy is in front or behind on the adoption curve?

Nic Granger (06:38)
I think it’s really, I’m not going to not answer, but I think it’s a really difficult question to answer because I different parts of it are probably ahead and behind in different areas, right? So, I mean, The energy sector is essentially a STEM based sector. So you’ve got engineers, you’ve got geologists, most of those professions are used to working with data and understand the importance of it. So to a certain extent, I think there are some elements that are ahead there, but also it’s a sector that’s been around for a very long time and that means that Generally,

organisations working in the [energy] sector have quite a lot of legacy and where you’ve got legacy systems, you’ve got more things you’ve got to think about. So you can’t necessarily just build a native AI app if you’ve got a legacy behind you that is where you’re trying to extract your data from. So I think there are some parts where the industry is ahead. There are some parts because of that legacy where perhaps we’re lagging a little bit in terms of some other sectors.

So the important bit for me is jumping out of sector and getting knowledge from other areas is really important too, so that you don’t stay in that same mindset of one particular sector at a time.

Adam Sroka (07:46)
I think it’s a space where you can learn a lot from elsewhere and see less regulated or maybe less mission critical industries that have tried things out, made some mistakes and learned some stuff. I do deeply believe that energy sector domain knowledge does pay dividends if you have it, but there is a lot to be learned from going a bit broad and beyond. The other side of the coin for me is that

I sometimes energy is a little bit unimaginative in what can be achieved with technology. When people come to you asking about the balance between regulation, innovation, guardrails versus competition, how do you walk the tightrope there?

Nic Granger (08:31)
think it can be a challenging one. So firstly, think If you’re trying to transform anything, getting a variety of views, variety of experience is the way you do it because you’re trying to do something different. So if we’re talking about digital transformation or the use of data, it’s really important to go out of sector and gather bits of experience. I think the sticking with the technology view of just one area is never going to get you to

where you need to be. And I think that’s the biggest challenge is that we don’t stay within our own little bubble and with in our own mindset. So some of the things we’ve done through the offshore energy digital strategy group, for example, has enabled us to broaden that. So, for example, we weren’t just thinking about the oil and gas sector, we’ve worked with colleagues that are working in offshore wind, the experiences are different, they’re similar, the overall purpose is very, very much aligned.

but actually there are different experiences and pockets of experience. So think bringing those together and having those conversations is a really important way that you can start to do things in a different way.

Adam Sroka (09:37)
And I want to touch on because in doing transformation, I think it’s always useful to have like flagship, like lighthouse case studies to talk about. I mean, you’re sitting on one, right? At NSEA, you built the national data repository, which is no mean feat. I mean, would you like to kind of expand on what it is, what it does, how it works, what all the kind of great fun things we learn along the way?

Nic Granger (10:00)
Yeah, sure. So I’m

When I first came in and said that there had been a review called the Wood review that had said that data should be at the heart of everything that the regulator does. But data across the sector was quite siloed. So we looked at that. We worked with the industry organizations that have been maintaining a form of the national data repository in the past and looked at how we could learn from that and leverage the success today and make it even better. So one of the challenges was at that point that it

It was a membership model. You needed to be a member to be able to access the data. And from our point of view, opening up the data to the wider uses base was a key. So whether that is new entrants into the sector who didn’t have the historic data or whether that was academia who were looking to do research around carbon storage or offshore wind. So we said, how can we take this model and the data set that was there?

and actually take that to the next level. So we brought it into public ownership. So at that point, it had a smaller data volume. We’re now up to 1.8 petabytes of data. We were able, because of the timing, to make that a cloud native. So we built that directly in the cloud, which then made it much more accessible to people.

And having that in one place means that anyone, you wanted to, you could log on to the NDR and access data. It breaks down that element of the silos so that the data is all retained in one place. It means industry doesn’t have to retain the data themselves separately if they don’t want to. What we’ve really seen from that is then a step change in terms of data usage. So for example, when our colleagues launched the first UK carbon storage licensing round, we saw

NDR data downloads increased by 20 fold on the day of the licensing round. So there’s a very clear link there that to enable you to build the carbon storage industry, you need to be able to access data that helps you to understand the subsurface and the geology of the basin. That hopefully then as an outcome will enable us as a country to capture up to 10 % of the UK’s annual emissions. So for me, the importance of having that data set in place in one place that’s easily accessible.

is really, we’re really starting to see that in terms of the outcomes that we’re trying to drive as an organisation.

Adam Sroka (12:25)
I think it’s amazing. So actually, think there’s two or three of the Hyper-Q podcasts. We had David Le Coran to talk about building the National Data Repository. It was incredible chat. And I’ve used it as a discussion point for years in my strategy pieces and the advisory work I do, because I find it really interesting. The actual data that you’re holding onto costs

millions to produce, some of the probably the most expensive data we’ve produced right as any in any industry and you’ve made it public and you’ve made it accessible, you’ve opened up to universities, to researchers, to whoever, incredible staff but we don’t seem to be able to do that for like smaller data sets that would would also be useful and I think like I talked to other industries that were adjacent so things like the grid infrastructure or telco and I think like

There are other analog data sets like that, but it’s a physical monopoly. Effectively, it’s like there’s a physical thing. And once the data is there, the data is there. Why can’t we make it into something? Once the benefit of reaping it 20, 30 years ago has been had, why can’t we make it public, bring it together? I think the National Grid’s my transmission network and things my favorite because everyone’s got different models, different views, different things. And some of this you can’t share, but

Everyone’s trying to piece together their own forecasts, their own understanding of what’s going on. was like, why can’t we learn some lessons from what you’ve done at NSCA? once you democratize is a word I hate, but once you democratize access to it and like usorship of it, you unlock all these other benefits and it becomes, I mean, I imagine it could become self-perpetuating and people being interested in it, finding new insights. What are some of the more fun things that have kind of come out the back of?

of it that was an unexpected benefits movie.

Nic Granger (14:15)
So for me, think one of the unexpected benefits is bringing the conversations around the value of data really round to the board tables of

Adam Sroka (14:25)
Hmm.

Nic Granger (14:26)
industry. Because I think if you went to any data manager throughout the last 30, 40 years, they’re all going to say, there’s huge amounts of data, the value that you can add from data. What I think having the NDR in place and the ability to access and use that data in the conversations we do around regulation.

has lifted that conversation up to a strategic level. And that wasn’t the purpose of putting in the NDR. That was very much that practical purpose that I talked about. But the change you can make now with the combination of the use of data and the potential of some of the emerging technologies, those conversations are happening around the board table. And I don’t think they would have been happening in the sector in the same way if we didn’t have the ability to surface those large quantities of data.

The other thing I think I’d say in terms of going back to the conversation about learning from other sectors. So the water sector has an open data project that is slightly different but works along the same sort of principles of what we’ve done with the NDR. And there are other projects as well that are looking at open data. So I think people are getting there in terms of understanding the balance between the commercial value in the data for companies and then how much you can take that to the next level if you leverage that across an industry.

Adam Sroka (15:40)
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting actually, because the like AI hype cycle that we’re in, everyone’s going, no, I it is like there’s significant step change in technology, bloody, bloody blah. It is great. Some great things are happening. But again, it’s like for me.

you’ve got kind of FOMO driven development going on and you’ve got C-suite saying, I need an AI and all that. And it’s a great excuse to kind of shoehorn in all the medicine that they need to take around like data platforms and stuff. It’s like, there’s a new thing to be excited by. And I think, yeah, it’s interesting because it’s analogous to what you’re saying there. Not every business needs to build something of the scale of the national data repository, but seeing it and interacting with it kind of…

opens up the field of possibilities for what could we do that would enable us to achieve a bit more and what can we, what good ideas can we kind of build upon? guess, like you’ve career history and digital transformation and understanding this sort of stuff, what does like, what does good digital transformation look like? Because it doesn’t have to be at this scale, right? Like what does good look like in most industries and in this industry?

Nic Granger (16:52)
Yeah, I think it’s really difficult to have one answer to that because it is going to be different depending on your context. But I think good digital transformation is about enabling people to do things in a different way. So starting off with sort of the missional purpose of your organisation, looking at that, identifying things that people say are the worst part of their day, right?

everybody should be able to answer that question. What have you come home and you’ve complained to your other half or a friend about? Digital transformation solves those challenges. I think the flip side of what poor digital transformation looks like is the how can we use where we need an AI? The bit that you were saying in terms of boards saying we need an AI, we need the metaverse, we need blockchain. We can come up with all sorts of technologies over the years where people have said we need to use this. That’s not good digital transformation.

good digital transformation is trying to solve that problem, whether that’s an individual, let’s make your day better, or whether that’s a system wide in terms of how can we have more value from this. That’s what the good looks like in digital transformation. That’s going to be different based on your organization, based on your sector. But I think it’s thinking about the problems we’re trying to solve and using digital and data to solve them rather than the flip side to that.

Adam Sroka (18:08)
I think you touched on another point, like the tech for tech sake and yeah, let’s buy NFTs and all this stuff. They have their place in some businesses, right? often I find that there is a huge disconnect between the technologists within any given business, whether it be a technology business or like where technology is just serving kind of the main business purpose.

there’s usually a disconnect in what’s being built and like the top level strategic objectives. And people often find that like, they’ll just cop out and say, well, it’s too hard. we don’t understand how technology links to the business strategy. How do you bring people on that journey where actually you lead with the business strategy to kind of align technology decisions?

Nic Granger (18:53)
So I think the starting point is don’t talk about technology or data, right? Those of us that have come up through a technical route, we love a good acronym, we love a good techie term. It makes us sound like we know what we’re talking about, but it also makes us unapproachable. And it means that if you’re looking at delivering a business strategy, people don’t necessarily know what you mean and therefore they’re not gonna listen to you. So I think the starting point is don’t talk in technical terms.

If you’ve got that business strategy, you know what your purpose is. So I talked about our purpose as an organization at the start. We’ve got three clear points, energy security, emissions reduction, and accelerating the energy transition. Those aren’t technology points. They’re not data

Adam Sroka (19:38)
Mm-hmm.

Nic Granger (19:38)
points, but none of those can happen without those tools and that value that can push forward those objectives. So I think talking in technology teams about delivery dates of a platform,

is important from a project sense, but I think when you’re talking wider than the direct tech team, it’s talking about how that can meet and help those outcomes. So when you asked me about the National Data Repository, talking about the fact that that can potentially lead to the capture of 10 % of UK’s annual emissions, that’s not a technology priority, that’s an organisational business priority. And I think we…

potentially in tech roles talk too much on the data and the technology and don’t talk as much on in the strategic sense.

Adam Sroka (20:26)
I completely agree. I think, something I’ll say to customers is that if you could like have a magic wand and it’s just worked, you probably would go for it if it was like the right price and the right risk appetite. But I think, one thing I often struggle with personally is thinking how, like when you give that kind of advice, which I think is right, human led, value centric, sometimes you do run the risk of

will stay with the status quo and do don’t actually use like the best technologies that are there for what you’re trying to do because it is hard to understand it all and you have to kind of be submerged in it. How do you balance that and how do you drive, I guess, I’m getting at is how do you drive data and digital into the core strategy, not as just like a secondary piece.

Nic Granger (21:17)
Yeah, so we’ve just published our second data and digital strategy. So that’s a five year strategy. Our starting point for that was those three buckets of priorities of what we’re trying to achieve as an organization was one end we started that. The other end was the look back at projects and priorities that we’ve delivered in the term of the first strategy, you know, the good let’s get in a room and put up as many post-it notes as we possibly can cover every surface. We’ve all done that.

And bringing into kind of workshops the whole team to say, OK, how what have you delivered in the last five years? What do we need to deliver for the next five years? We’ve we approach that from different ways. So different styles of workshop to get different voices in the room and different ideas. And then I think the important thing is bringing those two together. So closing the gap. So there are some things that are never going to feature in the business strategy that are essential in the technology strategy. So.

cybersecurity, for example, and underlying the conversations about infrastructure and user ID services and all those good things that you need in a system to be able to enable people to do the other aspects. Making sure that business strategy has a key point in it that says data will be at the heart of everything we do for me then enables those two to be linked and pull them together. So I think it’s thinking in the practical sense, but also thinking in the strategy sense.

explaining to colleagues that perhaps aren’t in the tech area how and why what the tech team are doing enables them to do other things I think is a real key part of that strategy process.

Adam Sroka (22:57)
That’s such a fine balance because like you see young enthusiastic consultants come in and they want to change every business they go into. like you do have to say, well, just be careful because sometimes you’re going out to very experienced, very capable people and telling them, the way you’ve done this for 20 years is actually wrong. And here’s the better way. And you have to be mindful of people. People don’t knowingly make the wrong decisions or suboptimal decisions, right? Like everything’s got a reason.

And you have to be careful. Nine times out of 10, I find the differences in the context of the business. And there’s like something trapped in the nuance around the experience. But yeah, so it’s always good fun seeing like the first kind of wave of consultants straight

out of

Nic Granger (23:42)
Thank you.

Adam Sroka (23:43)
whatever they’ve been in before get bashed off the shores of like experience and time and legacy businesses.

Nic Granger (23:48)
Absolutely. And

things change, right? Context changes. So it might be that something was the right decision at the time, but the context that the world has moved on, there are new priorities. So as an organisation, we started off as the oil and gas authority and we have evolved into North Sea Transition Authority. Our role has evolved during that time. That means our priorities have changed. That means some of the solutions that we might have delivered a number of years ago and now no longer fit for purpose, not because they were wrong, but because

the context has changed. I think sometimes you need to take brave decisions in a tech role and leadership role. So off the back of that strategy we launched in January, we’ve essentially created what we’re calling our foundation year. We are going back and we are looking at the foundations of everything we do in the digital data space. And we’re saying, do we have the right foundations? Possibly not. They were good at the time, but they’re creaking like

you know, the foundations of a house. So we talk a lot about shoring up the foundations. We’re going to shore up those foundations and that will enable us then to deliver in a different way going forward. But that means that we have to potentially pause some of our developments because we don’t know that the underlying data architecture, for example, is right and fit for the future. So we’re reviewing that and we’re doing that in a way that gives ourselves the time to be able to review that well in the context we are in now.

and then we can take that forward and potentially move at a quicker pace in some of our developments in the future.

Adam Sroka (25:21)
Yeah, I think I I love that. And you do have to take bets and you have to take brave steps. So many customers of ours get stuck trying to find the perfect first step. And they spend like two years analyzing like every possible permutation and optimization step they could go for. And actually the values in short, sharp steps, like sort of being able to change quickly and getting

Building up the delivery engine to make it easy to keep that going, which you kind of lose out on from trying to big plan up front, like do it all perfect at once.

Nic Granger (25:52)
Absolutely.

And I think the the agile terminology has fallen a little bit out of favor in recent years, but I think that move from that really waterfall kind of stage gate approach is one that we should continue to do, right? Working with your customers and your users in small bite sized chunks, that means you can then pivot fairly quickly if you need to, if a different priority comes up. I think it’s a core element of agile that I think is still as relevant today.

Adam Sroka (26:20)
100%. And I think like we are seeing we’re living through, I believe, a fundamental step change in the way all work, all knowledge work is done, right. And five years from now, it will be unrecognizable for a lot of industries like my workflows today, my personal workflows today are nothing like they were even six months ago, like because the tooling is coming on so quickly. And when you get familiar with them,

And I think actually then to think we can plan everything upfront, like you will burn so much cognitive load trying to figure that out when actually get really good people, give them authority and guardrails and let them run at the problem. And you’ll usually get most of the way to the best results without burdening people in bureaucracy and things like that. There’s always a balance in industries like energy, where it’s like heavily regulated and it’s important and all the kit’s really expensive and all that.

buy ourselves the time to do that discussion and talk about that stuff as opposed to like the bureaucracy that goes with a lot of that big plan thinking.

Nic Granger (27:27)
Absolutely, I think that’s key. Making sure that you’re making decisions in a way that your next decision works, even if you don’t know what it is. I think it’s really important when you’re doing any kind of transformation.

Adam Sroka (27:39)
I actually think it was it Barack Obama or someone. I’m terrible for misquoting people, but I’m sure it was like Barack Obama who defined leadership as being able to make decisions with like only 20 % of the information and just being kind confident and content with it. And he talks about how everyone tries to get 60, 80, 100 % of the information, whereas good leadership is being able to make a plan and go forward with the least possible information and still keep on courts.

It won’t be a Barack Obama, it’ll be someone totally different, but we’ll find out after the show. So, look, interested in, you do quite a few other things as well, you’re quite a busy person. The Offshore Energy Digital Strategy Group, you sit as chair of that and you’re trying to shape a bit more of the wider data and digitalization discussion. What’s that group’s key priorities? How does it differ? What fun things are you up to?

Nic Granger (28:34)
Yeah, sure. So I think a starting point for me and why we created the group was bringing together elements of offshore energy sector into one virtual room. There’ve always been some real pockets of excellence on digital data, but bringing those together and learning from each other that, as I was mentioning before, learning from different sectors, I think is really important. So that was the starting point for us. Since then, we’ve kind of built some data principles for the sector to use and live by. As you were just saying then, you can’t always know

context, you can’t know what’s happening. But if you have really good strong principles behind you, then you’re in a good situation to make a decision when you need to. We’ve got a couple of current priorities on the go. we were lucky to get awarded some funding from DSIP for a couple of projects. So we are working on a spatial viewer, which will extend the kind of access to geospatial data across the sector a bit wider. And if that works, then we can potentially add in more organizations as well.

And then we’re working on a proof of concept for a chatbot to work across those platforms. So one of the challenges that we were told when we had a workshop from people was the data is great when they can access it and they know where to go to access it. It’s not so good if they just don’t know which portal to go to. So the idea is to have a chatbot that will enable people to access that data better without changing the underlying infrastructure of all the portals.

And then the final one I was going to mention on that was around digital data skills. So we did a survey a few years ago and that showed us that in the sector, the sector felt or two thirds of the sector felt that they have the skills that they needed for digital data from existing technologies that dropped to a third for what was then defined as emerging technologies. Now that’s out of date. We really need to understand that a bit better. So we have literally actually as of today, gone live with a survey to the sector to ask

people about the skills. So what are the skills that you need in the sector now? How good are the skills? And we’re looking to identify what that gap is and then we can start to close that gap and work together on that. So that’s what we’re working on at the moment. So some interesting things.

Adam Sroka (30:46)
amazing. think it’s great seeing yeah because again it’s like in a position where you can do that cross-cutting stuff and kind of start to like carve a bit of a path through what’s going on and show like help people collaborate and things like that.

I always think that a lot of the problems end up being like sort of story as old as time. It’s like access to the data skills is always the one, right? I think especially in energy. I want to get onto another body that you chair, one that’s very close

Nic Granger (31:11)
You show.

Adam Sroka (31:11)
to my heart, the data lab and AI Scotland. Now for those in the audience that haven’t heard me bang on about the data lab, could you please explain who are you and what do you do and what’s AI Scotland?

Nic Granger (31:23)
Yeah, sure. So the Data Lab is Scotland’s Innovation Centre for Data and AI. hosted by the University of Edinburgh. I’m part of the Innovation Centre programme that’s funded by the Scottish Funding Council and essentially roles to foster innovation through collaboration, building skills, growing talent and championing Scotland’s data science community. So I’m really similar to some of the things I’ve just been talking about with an NSTA hat on. So helping Scotland to maximise value from

data and more so now also from AI and enabling Scotland to be at the heart of that kind of data powered future. So a really interesting organisation, I would say, if people are working in a data field and they’re not yet a member, please do join the 8000 members worldwide that are now part of the data lab community.

Adam Sroka (32:12)
It’s a shame on you if you’re not really a member. You should be. No, it’s incredible. Like I’ve been in and around the data lab for many years now and the people that come through, we’ve hired people that we’ve met through the data lab events.

I would highly recommend it, not just for Scottish people and Scottish businesses as well. It’s a very global community that the team have built. And I guess one of the things that the Data Lab does really very well is that skills piece and a whole host of executive education, on the ground training, funding of studentships and MSCs. Do you want to talk a bit about some of the really successful programs that you’ve run?

Nic Granger (32:50)
Yeah, sure. So you were saying not just Scotland, right? So there’s 8,000 members over 100 countries. So it’s quite broad in terms of involvement. Data labs help support over 300 SMEs in data and AI adoption. So through funding, technical supports, placements, events, networking, access to jobs boards. I mean, there’s so much there that if you haven’t got involved in

You mentioned AI Scotland. So the AI Scotland program was launched in March and the Data Lab was going to be a key partner in the delivery of some of those aspects, particularly around skills. Because I think we touched earlier on the energy sector skills, but I think just generally skills in the data world are becoming more and more important. And that’s really at the heart of what the Data Lab does.

Adam Sroka (33:42)
Yeah, because I think it’s really hard like I’ve got so many friends like one of my best friends is academic and it’s really very hard for universities to deliver cutting-edge like industry requirement courses, if you know what mean, like the time it takes to write a university accredited course, get it through testing, get it launched, take students through it, just the nature of it like

even a 12 week course at the moment is probably too slow for the pace of change in some of the tooling. So I think periphery organizations and other routes requiring those skills just becomes paramount because you there’s still a great place universities in the education system. I’ve never been through that. But I think when you’re in it kind of double-edged sword because it’s hard. And so there’s lots of other things out there. But if you’re in the world of work and you’ve been out of university for a long time.

It’s not really that big a disadvantage because everyone’s kind of level playing field trying to find institutions like the data lab to help bring them on on that way. And I think, yeah, look, I could bang on about the data lab for all day. It’s great. Bringing people into tech, creating communities and just helping people connect the dots and find a way into the industry is brilliant. It kind of all…

Nic Granger (34:59)
Yeah. And I think things like

the mentoring program, right? So you can sign up to a member of the community free of charge and join the mentorship program. So if you’re working in a data profession for many years, then you might want to be a mentor. But if you’re working in a career where you’re using data, you want to understand data better and you haven’t yet decided you’re, you know, put the data label on your own role, it’s

a great way that you can get access to some of skills and experience for people that have been working in the profession for many years.

Adam Sroka (35:32)
Yeah. And then last point, will move on, but exactly that the mentorship piece, it reminds me as well, even just the community as a whole, like for lots of people, you might be the only data person within your organization. You might have been given the database or given the power of the reports for it. So where do you go to for help? Well, come and find like-minded individuals that just like nerding out about this stuff. Remember that I used to do like the visualization challenges once a month and all this stuff, like go and find other people that have maybe

this path in a totally different industry but will help you think about skills, think about events to go to and things like that. And it all kind of orbits that essential theme I think is like so very important in energy, in data, is that that change through people element that you’ve spoken about in the past, like tech’s the easy bit right, probably my favourite catchphrase, but actually if you can convince all the right people to do the right stuff at the right time, the tech will sort itself.

How have you seen that play out and what’s your approach to kind of kickstarting process?

Nic Granger (36:38)
So I’ve probably alluded to a bit of it already in the conversation, but I think that the starting point for me is really understanding the purpose of what you’re trying to do. Whether that’s in an organisation or whether that’s in your own life, right? Understanding what you’re trying to achieve is the key starting point. I think then that part about what’s the worst part of your day? What doesn’t work? What’s the challenge that’s facing us? And thinking about those two things before you start to talk about

the data and tools that you’ve got to hand. So you mentioned earlier about people jumping to AI. AI is the solution, but we don’t know what the problem is. That’s the third step for me, trying to look at the data and the digital tools that help you close that gap between what you’re trying to achieve and what the worst part of your day or your challenge is. And that’s all about people having those conversations, thinking about ways you can do things differently whilst using that tool.

toolkit of digital and data. That’s where the people part of transformation is really important. Yes, you need to understand the tools, but don’t start with that understanding. Start with the understanding of what people are trying to do.

Adam Sroka (37:48)
Yeah, and you love that because when you do that right, you get into like a pull driven system as opposed to push that you’re like people are asking you for the tech as opposed to you force feeding them like the nearest latest and greatest. So do you have any predictions or forecasts looking ahead? Like what’s the outlook for data driven energy systems?

Nic Granger (38:08)
Wow, that’s a big question to end on, isn’t it? I think for me, this goes back to the conversation we were having about tech being part of the business strategy. So I’d like to see the energy system having that as more integral. I think at the moment, even though we all talk about data being at the heart of things, it is generally on the edge of strategy. I think that really does need to be in the center.

And that makes it much more integral to driving the energy systems rather than the point where I think we are at the moment, which is all about understanding the energy system. So I think a bit of a change in the role as it evolves.

Adam Sroka (38:51)
Well, thank you very much for your time today. Before I let anyone leave, I always just like to ask if people in the audience want to find out more about you, about NSTA, or any bodies that you are working with, or if there’s anything you’d like to promote or plug, where should we send them?

Nic Granger (39:06)
So for the NSTA, nsta authority.co.uk is best to look at the website. For the Datalab, thedatalab.com, but also they’re quite vocal on LinkedIn. And then me personally, LinkedIn is probably the best place. And I’m a straightforward Nic Ranger on LinkedIn.

Adam Sroka (39:23)
Well, thank you once again for coming on today. It’s been great to chat to you and I’m sure I’ll bump into you again at some sort of community event up here soon.

Nic Granger (39:33)
Great to talk to you, Adam. Thanks for the invite.

Adam Sroka (39:38)
Thank you once again for listening to the Hypercube Energy podcast. As always, if you have any feedback or comments or you want to get involved, please get in touch. And if you want to find out more about what’s happening in data and AI across the energy sector, please join the Beyond Energy community and I look forward to speaking to you soon.