About Rosalie van Casteren
Rosalie has a BSc and an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology. She spent her internship with Lockheed Martin in the US, working as part of the F35 manufacturing team, before joining Vattenfall through the International Trainee Programme.
“Applying for my first leadership role in Vattenfall as O&M Manager at HKZ was quite ambitious, but I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to be involved with what will be the world’s largest wind farm.
I had spent six weeks working on an offshore project in the UK during my trainee programme which gave me a sneak peak into the sector, and I was very attracted to a role working close to the technology and where I could make a tangible contribution to delivering sustainable power.
My job is to lead the team of service leaders and technicians who will keep the 140 turbines running and delivering maximum clean power. The project won’t be fully operational until mid-2023, so together with the other O&M manager my focus now is on recruiting the many technicians we will need.
By 2026 there could be 60 technicians at HKZ so we need to recruit from across different industries, and as well as interviewing my role is also to develop the onboarding programme to ensure they are ready for when operations start.
Trainee programme was a solid foundation.
It is not just the scale of HKZ which makes it a hugely exciting project to work on. It is the world’s first subsidy-free offshore wind project and will also use a new type of turbine, so I’m sure there will be many challenges ahead for the team. Supplier Siemens will be helping us in the first three years but we will handle all O&M tasks after that.
The trainee programme gave me a good foundation for the role as I was able to experience many facets of the energy industry in a short space of time. Seeing how power plants are dispatched to the market gave me a better understanding of how our production is related to what Vattenfall earns and I also gained a good understanding of stakeholder management issues.
I’m really looking forward to the HKZ team getting the keys to our new O&M hub at IJmuiden soon. Hopefully that will enable me to finally leave behind my home office and be with my new team in person!”