Past, Present, & Future of Progen Power Ltd

Hi, it’s Alex here. Technical & Operations director for Progen Power. As 2022 draws to a close, I thought it would be a good opportunity to give a brief rundown on what’s been going on here at Progen HQ over the past 12 months.

When we set out on this unknown journey to start a new power company, some people thought we were mad, and perhaps as I sit here writing this with a potential recession looming we are a little bit mad!!

Every good idea needs a good plan, so that's where we started.

Firstly we asked ourselves "What is important to us?" Not just as a brand, but as human beings. Truly understanding our company vision would allow us to succeed.

The first one was integrity. For us, this meant “Don’t tell lies” and “Don’t sell something that we can’t deliver. As it turns out not all clients care about this …..... go figure.

The second was "Don’t undersell ourselves." It’s fair to say that the industry has been plagued over the years with companies "buying" work for next to nothing and ending up delivering poor service. Unfortunately, it’s still going on today and I cannot get my head around why clients put up with it.

The third was to "Enjoy ourselves." Anyone who’s involved in this industry knows that to strive for excellence you need to put in the hard work. We spend a lot of time away from our families while we're delivering these projects, so it's very important to keep morale high. A happy team is a productive team. ?

So with the company vision firmly laid out, we had a basic plan for slow, steady, humble growth…. We never expected things to take off quite as wildly as they have.

Our first outing as a business was to Donington Park for Download Festival. Here we deployed our entire fleet of Generators, Distribution Boards, and Cable, to undertake a mammoth last-minute rescue attempt to help get the show over the line, with only 2 weeks' notice. It was seriously hard work!! We were understaffed, underprepared, and having to build new kit to order whilst we were on site wasn't ideal. There were definitely a few conversations had regarding failing the "Don’t sell something that we can’t deliver" part of our company vision already. But the show happened, lessons were learnt, the punters had a great time, and the client was very happy. Mission accomplished, tea and medals all round!

Our next outing was to Silverstone for British Grand Prix. A site that myself, and most of our freelance crew knew very well having all been involved with delivering the Grand Prix since 2020. The whole team understood the importance of a seamless delivery knowing Silverstone had taken a huge risk in appointing us and our reputation was exposed for all to see. ?

The result was that I couldn’t have been happier with how the project was delivered. We had put months of planning into it and implemented a rigorous plan with regard to installation, fuelling, data capture, and decommissioning. All of which ran perfectly and the entire crew helped us achieve something that so often falls by the wayside once the “fog of war” sets in during those hectic days leading up to and during the show. ?

We had a short period (a few days) of R&R before piling back into Silverstone to start installing the power for the MotoGP. Again, months of planning had gone into this event and we now had two successful major projects under our belt.

Thankfully, this event was also a success, with no notable failures on our systems. Client happy, punters happy, success once again!

From there we bounced half the kit and some of the crew directly down to Gunnersbury Park in London for Festival Republic’s “Gunnersbury Live” shows featuring Rex Orange County, Rufus Du Sol, Andy C, and Chase & Status.

Great shows in a perfect location! ?

Once the rest of the kit had landed back in Exeter, it was shortly off again to a large Emergency job, providing back-up power to one of largest privately owned holiday parks in the country. The client had lost their main supply, stopping power flowing to almost 200 caravans which were currently occupied by holidaymakers. This meant we had to install 16 generators at various locations across the site, in order to pick up the various distribution boards to restore power while the fault in the main cable was found. The fault was never actually found, so we were then required to install a completely temporary system using our cable and distribution for the entire site. This involved gradually removing generators and moving the system back onto the mains supply.

Once again, a very happy customer who didn’t end up having to send 200 families home from their holidays, thanks to our herculean efforts in the dark.

So that’s a very whistle-stop tour of the major bits. Aside from the major projects mentioned we’ve had lots of dry hire going on, various smaller events, and several road tow generators going in and out for weddings and parties. It’s been an interesting year and I never expected us to be quite so well subscribed. ?

We’ve had some amazing support from our freelance teams who have really bought into our ethos of providing an exceptional customer experience.

Progen Power has received unwavering support from our suppliers who have mostly been happy to give us credit accounts without any trading history, as they can see the potential in this business.

And most importantly the customers who have stuck by us and offered patience and advice during the growing pains of starting a completely new business. I cannot thank these people enough. ?

So what are we doing right now?

At the moment Progen Power has quite a lot of kit out on hire to various Christmas Events, Festive Light Trails, and Christmas Markets. We’ve recently started to move into the construction and industrial hire sector with machines out on long-term hire with new customers across the UK.

We’re working on an exciting pipeline of projects for 2023 with clients in the Film & TV, Touring, and Events sectors.

?In the Warehouse we have a team of guys working flat out, testing and inspecting all of our existing equipment. Once this task has been completed, they will move on to building and testing our new cables for the 2023 events season. By spring 2023 we expect to have doubled our stock of cable, distribution and lighting. ?

Over in the yard, the pace is as equally frenetic as we finally get on top of our servicing duties across our entire generator fleet. Since the end of the summer season, we have taken delivery of a further 20 new generators, each requiring livery and PDI checks before being made ready for hire. We’re due a further 25 machines before Christmas, and we will work on getting those made ready for hire into February no doubt.

Once again I want to again say a huge thank you to all of our staff, contractors, clients, suppliers and competitors for helping us achieve such greatness this year. This industry is truly made up of some of the most fantastic people.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to All!