From an eight-person service team to a two-station operating remit.

Mandate

Coordinate fleet operating responsibility and make the cost, authority and evidence behind maintenance decisions intelligible.

Outcomes

• Supported the 2023 outage revision from 28 to 33 days with its additional ₹8.4 Cr maintenance expense disclosed.
• Reconciled one 2025 quarter’s 1800 GWh gross generation, 126 GWh auxiliary use and 1674 GWh sent-out account.
• Coordinated a 2024 window revision with ₹2.7 Cr incremental standby and logistics expense retained.

Decisions in context

My appointment brought the fleet’s operating account into the executive discussion on a continuing basis. I had to connect station evidence with financial and commercial consequences without dissolving the authority held by qualified technical colleagues or the parties responsible for system coordination. The 2023 outage extension tested that distinction because a defensible technical decision still carried a date variance and additional cost. The generation reconciliation tested it differently: the larger headline quantity could not stand in for every boundary of the physical account. I now ask for both the conclusion and the evidence that limits it. The scale of this appointment is the 980-person operating remit, not all 1350 company employees or an unrestricted claim over the company’s assets. I remain accountable for the choices within my delegation and for explaining proposals that need separate approval.

Reason for the move

Appointed COO after leading generation operations; this is the current appointment.

Mandate

Bring station maintenance, specialist support and material preparation into a coherent fleet programme.

Outcomes

• Sponsored the 2016 review of twelve high-value spare assemblies against four planned applications.
• Kept the nine compatible and three unresolved assembly findings distinct in the operating account.
• Supported ₹1.6 Cr verification and rework expense without relabelling it as inventory value or avoided loss.

Decisions in context

The move from station maintenance to generation operations changed the comparisons I had to make. A local plan could be well considered and still compete with another station for specialist attendance or material. I needed to understand those dependencies before asking colleagues to make commitments. The spare review also showed why a common stock description was not enough to establish suitability across applications. I worked with engineering and procurement to preserve the technical finding and explain its scheduling and expense consequences. This was a functional director appointment in the executive organisation; it did not confer a statutory board seat. My delegated operating account was also narrower than company revenue or capital authority. I learned to make those distinctions explicit because a fleet title can otherwise imply a breadth of responsibility that the actual appointment does not support.

Reason for the move

Promoted to COO after six years in the fleet operations appointment.

Mandate

Organise station maintenance and support arrangements while preserving technical authority and the continuing operating requirement.

Outcomes

• Took responsibility for the 2010 support-scope reduction that underestimated specialist attendance.
• Disclosed ₹39 lakh additional callout and standby over four months without netting it against an annual proposal.
• Revised the scope discussion to distinguish work that stopped, qualified internal capacity and external support still needed.

Decisions in context

Joining the generating company made the consequences after a maintenance assignment part of my everyday responsibility. I could no longer view the end of a service visit as the natural end of the story. The station had to live with the continuing requirement, and the support arrangement had to match it. My 2010 recommendation exposed a weakness in that judgement. I had given the intended saving too much weight and the pattern of specialist attendance too little. Correcting the scope required a better account of the work and an admission that an earlier warning had been underused. I did not gain technical release authority simply by taking this management role. The appointment instead developed my ability to organise qualified decisions, retain their practical consequences and explain where my own commercial recommendation had proved incomplete.

Reason for the move

Promoted into generation operations as the company’s fleet responsibility grew.

Mandate

Coordinate people, material and supplier attendance for maintenance assignments undertaken by the service company.

Outcomes

• Made dependencies between specialist attendance and work sequence explicit in assignment planning.
• Separated service-company expense responsibility from the customer station’s operating authority.
• Kept changed inspection findings in programme discussions when they complicated the intended date.

Decisions in context

The promotion gave me a coordinating remit across people whose technical responsibilities remained distinct. I had to understand what an engineer needed before a task could progress, what a supplier had actually committed to provide and which change required a revised commercial account. It was tempting to treat a tidy programme as evidence that those questions had been resolved. Experience taught me to ask for the specific dependency behind the date. Iravela earned service revenue and did not own generating capacity, so the company scale here should not be confused with the customer stations we supported. My expense delegation covered service delivery, not fuel or the financial effect of unavailable generation. The role prepared me for station responsibility by making me more attentive to what an assignment left unresolved when the service team departed.

Reason for the move

Joined Varnedra to assume responsibility within a generating station rather than a service assignment.

Mandate

Support experienced engineers with work records, material follow-up and assignment preparation.

Outcomes

• Learned to distinguish a completed record from the technical conclusion it supported.
• Kept material and attendance questions visible to the responsible senior engineer.
• Developed a practical understanding of how one task’s evidence affected the next stage of an assignment.

Decisions in context

I entered this appointment shortly after completing mechanical engineering in June 1992. The work was supervised and specific. I helped maintain records, followed material requirements and supported preparation for maintenance assignments, rather than directing a station or independently approving equipment. Watching experienced colleagues handle an unexpected finding taught me more than the original programme could have done. The relevant question was not whether I had finished my part of the paperwork, but whether the responsible person had the evidence needed for the next decision. I also saw the cost of imprecise statements about what was available or complete. This beginning belongs in the chronology at its actual scale. It explains a habit of examining dependencies and authority that later became useful in management, without projecting my current title backwards onto a junior role.

Reason for the move

Promoted to outage coordination manager after nearly seven years of service work.