Keeping on top: O’Hara’s mission at National Grid

Cordi O’Hara talks to Jane Gray about taking the helm at National Grid Electricity Distribution. She discusses the challenge of stakeholder engagement on a massive scale, bolstering supply chains and accelerating connections.

National Grid’s Cordi O’Hara is no stranger to making firsts. She was the first woman to lead its System Operator function, overseeing the birth of the Capacity Market in 2017. She was the first female to head its international Ventures business and now she is the first “Griddie” to preside over a UK power distribution network, following the energy giant’s £7.8 billion acquisition of Western Power Distribution (WPD).

O’Hara took the helm at the renamed National Gird Electricity Distribution (NGED) in April this year, picking up from WPD lifer Phil Swift who saw the company through its integration into the National Grid leviathan.

This makes O’Hara the first outsider to lead the power network for generations – both Swift and his predecessor Robert Symons having worked their way through the ranks at WPD and its previous incarnation, the South Western Electricity Board.

But as we sit down to talk at National Grid’s head office – a corporate oasis set on the bustling Strand in London and a constant base for O’Hara over a peripatetic decade at Grid – she brushes this particular milestone aside.

“You know, every organisation’s got its sort of history, hasn’t it. And therefore there has been a process of different cultures coming together [through the acquisition].”

But, she adds, from the moment John Pettigrew, National Grid CEO and Vince Sorgi, president of Western Power Distribution’s former owner PPL, met to hammer out a deal it was “very clear that there were shared values”.

“When you look at where Vince had taken PPL and therefore how leadership had been conducted at WPD there was big alignment on the values we hold at National Grid – especially on that desire to be a proactive network that acts and thinks in the best interests of customers and a fair transition to net zero.”

This alignment has made settling into her new role relatively easy. Nevertheless, stepping into the distribution arena with its close proximity to end consumers and significant requirements for engagement with a multitude of stakeholders has represented a marked change from her previous experiences in the energy sector, O’Hara admits.

What’s struck her most is “just the volume of interactions and work happening on any one day in the network. You know, you’re doing a different level of granularity and volume of work all the time. It’s lots and lots of small capital jobs every day. That’s versus the really really big, lumpy projects you see at transmission level.”

A major challenge in this new environment is keeping up with the ballooning requirement for stakeholder engagement, O’Hara notes, quoting figures on the number of local government and community representation bodies on NGED’s patch – 126 local authorities, 190 parliamentary constituencies, over 4,000 parish councils and four combined authorities.

This scale of daily interaction with diverse stakeholders in the service provided by the network and its future development has been “important to embrace early,” says O’Hara. While it hasn’t been a surprise to her, she notes with a wry smile, “you really need to stay on top of it.”

With a RIIO-ED2 business plan to deliver which includes £6.7 billion of planned investment to make NGED “net zero ready” and chunky targets for improved services to consumers and connections customers, there is plenty more that needs staying on top of too.

To continue reading Utility Week’s interview with Cordi O’Hara, click here to access the digital weekly edition where it first appeared.