The journey so far
Aparna Vardekar
Chief Operating Officer · India
My first job was in a service team, not a station leadership office.
1200 MW
Company installed capacity
Four 300 MW units across two stations; October 2026
980
Operating colleagues in my remit
Six direct reports; company workforce 1350
₹480 Cr
Delegated non-fuel expense
FY 2026–27; excludes fuel, separate capital and financing
The compass
I judge a maintenance programme by the operating responsibility it leaves behind. The calendar, the technical finding and the commercial account each tell part of the story. My work is to bring those accounts together without allowing a preferred date to settle a question that properly belongs to a qualified specialist. A difficult explanation today is better than a completion claim that the next operating period cannot support.
The route
Waypoint 01 · 1992 —1999
Iravela Power Services
I began in an eight-person service team, learning to connect work records with the next task without claiming operating or release authority.
Waypoint 02 · 1999 —2006
Iravela Power Services
I coordinated specialist attendance, material and supplier commitments while retaining technical decisions with the responsible engineers.
Waypoint 03 · 2006 —2013
Varnedra Energy
I managed maintenance at one 600 MW station and owned a support-scope reduction that required additional callout and standby expense.
Waypoint 04 · 2013 —2019
Varnedra Energy
I coordinated a growing fleet and challenged spare suitability and overlapping maintenance commitments.
Waypoint 05 · 2020 — present
Varnedra Energy
I lead 980 operating colleagues across four 300 MW units, with a ₹480 Cr FY 2026–27 non-fuel expense delegation and six direct reports.
Expeditions
01
In 2023 one of our 300 MW units entered a planned 28-day outage. The original maintenance estimate was ₹42 Cr. Inspection during the work identified an additional requirement that the qualified technical team said needed to be addressed before its release decision. The programme could no longer be honestly described by the original scope and date. My responsibility was to coordinate the revised work and its commercial consequences, not to substitute a management preference for that technical judgement. The commercial team challenged the extension because the lost operating period mattered. The project coordinator also wanted us to distinguish necessary additional work from tasks that might be moved to another window. Those were reasonable challenges. We examined the scope with the responsible specialists, kept the work required for the release decision in the outage and documented the basis for the revised programme. I did not ask the station to continue simply to preserve the original completion measure. The actual outage lasted 33 days, five more than planned. Incremental maintenance expense was ₹8.4 Cr, bringing the comparable maintenance account to ₹50.4 Cr. Those figures exclude forgone generation and revenue; the financial effect of the unavailable period requires a separate account with its own assumptions. I presented the date variance and the extra expense together. Describing the revised programme as a timely completion would have hidden the decision the reader needed to understand. We reviewed the subsequent 90 days of operating observations with the station team. That review supported a more informed discussion of the work, but did not establish that every future operating risk had disappeared or that the extension alone caused later performance. Technical release, operating permissions and system coordination remained with the appropriate authorities throughout. The consequence I retain is a more demanding definition of completion. A programme can require an extension for a defensible reason and still owe the business a candid explanation of its original assumptions. I would want a board to hear both parts. This fictional case demonstrates maintenance judgement and the limits of an executive’s authority; it is not an instruction for operating or returning a real generating unit to service.
02
In 2016 our maintenance planning account referred to twelve high-value spare assemblies held for four intended applications across the fleet. The stock position looked reassuring. Engineering colleagues asked whether the account had established compatibility for the actual applications rather than merely confirming that the items existed. I supported a specific review because the operating programme depended on the answer, even though procurement colleagues reasonably objected to reopening a purchase that had already consumed effort and capital. The review found nine assemblies compatible with the planned applications and three requiring modification or replacement. I did not infer that the three had been worthless when purchased, or that all earlier procurement work was defective. The relevant question was whether they supported the uses now proposed. Qualified engineering staff owned that finding. My part was to coordinate the effect on the maintenance programme, supplier response and expense approval. We incurred ₹1.6 Cr in verification and rework expense. That amount is not the value of the twelve assemblies, the cost of replacing all three unresolved items or an avoided-loss estimate. I kept those distinctions in the account because a single large stock figure could otherwise make the review appear either trivial or extravagantly expensive. The maintenance plan also had to retain the applications that remained unresolved until the proper technical and commercial decisions were complete. The alternative was to leave the stock list as the principal indication of preparedness and deal with application questions closer to the work. That would have protected the appearance of readiness while making the later programme more dependent on an untested assumption. I chose to accept the earlier inconvenience. Procurement retained an important role in the supplier discussions; the review was not a reason to bypass them. The result was a more specific preparation account, not a universal claim about spare reliability. I learned to ask what a material holding enables us to do and which evidence supports that statement. For a leadership profile, the case shows why a COO should distinguish coordination and funding from technical certification. It does not provide an engineering method for modifying an assembly or imply that an executive narrative can replace an application assessment.
03
A 2025 quarterly review of our four-unit generating fleet used gross output prominently in the management discussion. The figure was 1800 GWh. A separate station account recorded 126 GWh of auxiliary consumption, leaving 1674 GWh sent out at the specified station boundary. The arithmetic was straightforward, but the presentation made it too easy to move between gross generation and energy available outside the station without stating the difference. I asked the operating and finance teams to reconcile the presentation before using it in the wider performance account. Some colleagues felt the gross measure was familiar and adequate for the intended audience. Others worried that adding another measure would distract from the quarter’s operating work. I agreed that the report should remain readable, but not by leaving its physical boundary implicit. A larger number was not a sufficient reason to make it the only visible account. The review involved ₹72 lakh in measurement and reconciliation work. That is review expense, not the monetary value of 126 GWh or an estimate of recovered revenue. The account retained gross generation, station consumption and the resulting sent-out quantity together. It did not describe 1674 GWh as electricity billed to customers, because losses and commercial arrangements beyond the defined station boundary were outside that statement. I also declined to present a comparison with the preceding quarter as a demonstrated efficiency gain. Different loading and operating conditions required examination before such a conclusion could be supported. The current quarter’s identity was useful on its own: 1800 less 126 equals 1674. It could establish the quantities in the selected account without establishing why a ratio had changed or how much benefit a particular management action had caused. The consequence was a more intelligible discussion between operators and financial colleagues. We gave up the simplicity of a single headline total, while preserving the underlying gross figure for the questions it legitimately answered. This fictional case is about the discipline of explaining a performance measure. It is not a tariff calculation, a grid-loss assessment or evidence of emissions improvement. I want readers to see the boundary before they draw the conclusion.
04
In 2010, while I was station maintenance manager, I supported a ₹48 lakh annual reduction to a ₹2.4 Cr specialist-support agreement. I believed a narrower scope would remove attendance we did not need routinely. The proposal gave too little weight to the uneven pattern of work that still required qualified external support. Nandita Belvankar, our fictional station services manager, challenged that assumption. I heard the concern but did not give it sufficient influence over my recommendation. The next four months required additional callout and standby costing ₹39 lakh. I had to explain why a proposal presented as a considered reduction had left the station needing further support. The annual proposed saving and the four-month corrective expense belong to different periods. Subtracting one from the other would create an attractive but misleading answer. I kept both figures with their actual scope and accepted responsibility for the original recommendation. The correction did not mean restoring every element of the old agreement automatically. We examined which work could be covered by our own appropriately qualified people, which activities genuinely no longer required the same arrangement and which external availability the station still needed. Staffing qualifications, working-time requirements and specialist authority remained constraints on that decision. I did not ask colleagues to absorb missing support through unrecorded or unsuitable work. Procurement wanted a clear basis for revising the arrangement, while the station team wanted the practical attendance requirement understood before another commercial promise was made. I brought those accounts together and supported a revised scope. The additional expense remained a consequence of the correction, not an investment retrospectively described as part of my original plan. Nor did I claim that the revised contract could remove every future need for an unplanned callout. The lasting change was in my own decision process. I became less willing to infer the work that could stop from the amount I hoped to save. This case matters to my leadership record because it includes a colleague’s earlier dissent and a cost I had to defend after the first decision proved incomplete. It is a fictional account of judgement and correction, with no claim about a real supplier, station incident or employment outcome.
05
In 2024 two planned outage programmes overlapped for eleven days in which they expected access to some of the same specialist resources. Each local programme looked plausible when reviewed independently. The fleet view showed the conflict. I wanted the constraint addressed before both dates hardened into commitments that the available organisation could not support. This was an operating coordination question, not an opportunity for me to assume a system operator’s authority. One station team argued for protecting its original window because it had already arranged several dependent activities. The other pointed to its own maintenance requirements and the cost of changing supplier attendance. Both had credible reasons. We examined the resource dependency, the work scope and the consequences of alternate arrangements with the responsible technical, commercial and coordination parties. A date change could not itself provide technical permission or replace the external processes relevant to the stations. The agreed programme moved one window by fourteen days through the required coordination. Incremental contractor standby and logistics expense was ₹2.7 Cr. I reported that amount as the consequence of the chosen arrangement, separately from the original outage budgets and any generation-related financial effect. It was not evidence that rescheduling was free, or that the extra cost was smaller than every possible alternative. The decision record retained why this arrangement was supported on available evidence. We gave up the appearance that both original plans could proceed unchanged. That was uncomfortable for colleagues who had put significant work into them. My responsibility was to acknowledge that effort while refusing to treat two local schedules as a feasible fleet programme merely because each had a confident owner. The revised account specified the dependencies that still required attention rather than suggesting the shared-resource issue had made every other uncertainty disappear. I use this fictional case to explain what changes when an operator moves from a station remit to a fleet remit. The task includes reconciling legitimate local priorities and making the cost of coordination visible. It does not justify disregarding technical constraints, changing dispatch unilaterally or promising that a preferred planning method will always yield a better outcome. The leadership evidence lies in the decision and its disclosed limits.
Terrain
Languages
Fellow travellers
Aparna retained the engineering qualification when the schedule would have read better without it. In our fictional spare review, she made the commercial consequences visible without asking my team to certify an application we had not confirmed.
I challenged the original support reduction. Aparna later acknowledged that she had not given our attendance evidence enough weight, and kept the correction in the account she presented to management.
Dispatches
I examine why a defensible maintenance extension still needs a candid variance explanation, and why the following operating period cannot be reduced to a completion date.
Read the essayI explain why procurement evidence and technical suitability answer different questions, and how a fleet leader can examine both without taking over engineering authority.
Read the essayI consider how an accurate output figure can still support an inaccurate inference when gross generation, internal use and sent-out energy are treated as interchangeable.
Read the essayAn invitation
I am interested in carefully scoped operating mandates and a possible first non-executive appointment where this experience is relevant. Any discussion would depend on current employment, conflicts, preparation and realistic time. This is a fictional profile, not an offer of station operating advice or a real professional contact service.
office@aparnavardekar.example