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Is Indonesia's New Capital a Recipe for Disaster or The Right Move?
56 Plays2 months ago
This week Jason & Carlos are joined by Mike, for the first in-person episode since the start of the podcast!
The trio sit down to discuss Indonesia’s plans to build a new capital city in the jungle to replace Jakarta, they then talk through an emerging alternative to P6 in the CPM planning space called Planera, before finally celebrating the Viking wind farm’s connection to the UK grid and what it means for the country.
Follow Carlos on Linkedin | Follow Jason on Linkedin | Check out Aphex
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Transcript
Living Near Airports and Neusentire Risks
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, the option basically, it's kind of like if you're negotiating with the mob. You don't have to buy a house in Neusentire. You can stay with the airport where it is. You can keep your house where it is. It will go underwater at some point. So it's totally up to you what you do. All options are on the table, your call. It's your choice. See you in Neusentire. We'll just be over there. Come over, come over. Come over, fine. If you want to have a swim, stay where you are. Early options.
Recording in London After a Long Time
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. Today, we are all three of us joined together, Carlos, Mike, and myself, in a very warm in-person for the first time in a long time in London. Folks, how are you going? It's odd to be in real life. Yeah, I'm very, very aware of the camera and microphone now.
00:00:58
Speaker
yeah That's good, though. I think after the walk, the sweat's starting to cool down in the air conditioning, so I'm feeling good. Yeah, for those not in the UK, it is ah warm in a place that doesn't have air conditioners in almost all the real rooms and buildings.
Palm Jumeirah Development in Dubai
00:01:14
Speaker
So, Carlos, what's going on? What have you been reading? these So, the parm in Dubai, you know, there's the big functional parm in Jameerah. There's two of them, right, isn't there? Yeah, so the second one, the mothballed, basically.
00:01:27
Speaker
When you say mothball, they built a large part of it. and They built a huge amount of it, yeah but they stopped. ah It started back in 2008. It's called Jamira 2 Palm, which is just a marketing exercise for property value. It's in Jebel Ali, which is a bit further along. But yeah, they're restarting now. ah They start restarted the, is it dredging when they spray the sand to create the land? But yeah, it will create 110 kilometers of premium beach property in hotels and 60 hotels. So yeah, huge amount. This sounds a little bit like you're telling us to buy property. Is that premium beachfront? Yeah. Okay. That's pretty much beachfront. I'm already upside. Okay. You can't go wrong. A little off market switch. Yeah. If you're looking to move money from countries to other countries.
Indonesia's Capital Relocation: Environmental and Political Challenges
00:02:13
Speaker
after after the last two weeks where Mike and I have traveled from Australia to Vietnam and then to the UK one thing we've learned along the way if there's any country where you want to buy off the plan property, it's Dubai and Dunang in Vietnam where basically half the high-rises are partially complete and stopped by the way So off the plan purchases are a good idea
00:02:39
Speaker
solid not risk yeah what can go wrong hunter is it happening Mike and welcome back, mate, after a couple of weeks off and a few other substitutes in. Yeah, no, thank you. It's good to be back. Usually I only get the call up when one of you is having a baby. So it's, it's nice to be with at least a few weeks till that happens again.
00:03:00
Speaker
and I'm back. Awesome. So we got some interesting topics on the docket today. So for our first in-person episode in a long time, we're going to start in Indonesia. We're going to talk about the country's decision to move its entire capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara, which just blew my mind, an entire city being built in the jungle, or I guess what was the
Relocation Challenges: Government Ministries and Citizens
00:03:24
Speaker
jungle, but we won't mention that.
00:03:26
Speaker
ah Next, we're discussing a proposed replacement to planning in P6, controversial topic in a tool called Planera that brings a collaborative and sort of whiteboard aspect to CPM planning. And then finally, we're gonna end on a bit of good news as opposed to the the other two topics with the completion of the coolest project ever, the Viking wind farm located in the Shetlands that's set to power half a million homes in the UK.
00:03:56
Speaker
Not nagging any of our other topics, but all three of these are pretty good. So to kick things off, ah construction in Nusantara, construction is well underway in Indonesia on a brand new city by the name of Nusantara that aims to replace Jakarta as the country's capital.
00:04:14
Speaker
The new city is hoping to accelerate the Indonesian economy by relieving the burden on Jakarta as the capital and business center. Additionally, this should also um relieve the burden on a city that's losing 25 centimetres a year to the ocean, um which is a battle you don't want to take on. ah So we're going to dive into this somewhat ambitious nature of a scheme and how feasible it is. So what do you reckon? Moving the capital city? Bold strategy
Socio-Political Impact of Jakarta's Move
00:04:43
Speaker
cotton?
00:04:44
Speaker
Has it been done before? Are there any other major capital city relocations you can think of? I've moved house before, but I can't think of it. That was major. ah Yeah, no, I think the overwhelming need to move the city because it's being subsumed by the ocean is, I didn't know that. Was that something you're aware of? I was not aware, no.
00:05:09
Speaker
um Yeah. It's a, it's a bit wild. Um, cause they're not just moving the city, they're moving it to an entirely different major island. Um, so Borneo, which is where my good eye is. Okay. Yeah. So it's like, it's like northeast of the island that Jakarta's on. If it was a battle, it's the equivalent of running away from the ocean. The ocean's winning. We're going to run away from the ocean and go to and into the hills. The strategy checks it out. Yeah. There's a couple of parts that seem a bit dodgy. So there's the social impact because this seems like a rich person scheme. In what way? Because it's going to be like a high end carbon neutral flashy project. And you'd imagine that the average person in Jakarta doesn't have the cash to make the transition.
Displacement and Financial Support Concerns
00:05:55
Speaker
what will happen to those that are left yeah in property price, in infrastructure, in everything. yeah So that seems a bit dodgy. And then if you tie that with ah the writ like the political risk of, but let's just say the current party is slightly right wing and slightly left wing come in, they're going, well, let's sack that off and build hospitals and schools. So yeah. I think the the question of like what happens to people's homes if the capital moves was the, like ah And like probably the like key question that anyone in Jakarta is probably asking, because it feels like there's on one hand, it feels like you're moving the capital city, but that feels like a very different thing to moving the people that live in the current capital city to a new capital city.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't know, I don't know if it's, is it a build it and they will come kind of thing. The, uh, the, the plan of attack is not to force people to move immediately. The relocation is going to involve moving 38 ministries and the officials from those ministries over to Nusantara by 2024 and then phasing into 2027. So this is happening now.
00:07:02
Speaker
And then the, and for everyone else that's going to live in Jakarta, they will get, um don't worry, there's plenty of financial support for the move over and buying a house in the new city. ah The government has allocated a whopping 5.6 million US dollars. I'm going to say that seems reasonable. So Indonesia's like top 10 countries population, right? It's like 200 or 300 million. Yeah, I think there's 10 million. I'm going to bet there's at least 20 million people in and around Jakarta. Yeah, I think there's like 10 mil plus in Jakarta. This holds 1.5 million, once fully developed in 2045.
00:07:38
Speaker
So there's going to be this huge lag. The math doesn't necessarily check out. The math doesn't. The other bit of math that doesn't check out is, so it houses 1.5 million people, costs 32 billion dollars, which is only 20 grand per person. That seems cheap. That's good value. Other countries should build their cities in Indonesia and then ship them. So off-site fabrication. You should build them.
00:08:05
Speaker
Sublet out. yeah That's a great idea. yeah That's way cheaper. That's what we need. ah More offsite fabrication. Yeah, yeah the the total support package of, it sounds better if you say it it's 90 billion rupee, which translates to or converts to 5.6 million US dollars. And residents can choose to receive compensation or be ro be relocated through a social impact handling scheme, which sounds like a nice set of words for forcing people So that mean that if you were saying that there's two male max population, 5.6 million, everyone gets
Nusantara Project Feasibility and Progress
00:08:40
Speaker
three bucks. three box fifty That's not even a tube rod. So does anyone know when this, if if they're relocating now, they must've been building this project for a while. I think they started last year. That's unreasonably quick. Yeah. I think that first phase, which I said is the most ambitious phase was supposed to only take two years, which seems very fast.
00:09:03
Speaker
Has anyone done a comparison between this and NEOM? No, they're quite hard to compare. ah On so many levels. The similarity is the environmental impact and the indigenous rights. They're quite similar. but So did anyone look at the contractors building all this if it's been going for like a year or two years? I was thinking about that a second ago, but there's no internet in here.
00:09:31
Speaker
We'll put that one in first. No, all I saw was 2024, I think is when they're intending to start moving people over, but they are already well behind schedule because lo and behold, there's been weather and supply chain issues, which couldn't have been foreseen given your building in the tropics.
00:09:50
Speaker
The idea of trying to relocate 2 million people is... It's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. I'm going to bet that at least half the 1.5 million people they'll be selling on the real estate market. Say that again? I'd imagine the 1.5 million people that will live there. So there's 1.5 million living there, but they said they're relocating 2 million.
00:10:10
Speaker
so i That map doesn't matter either. I think what they're basically doing is we'll move all the government areas, yes relocate all the people that are working for the government, and then the rest might happen at some stage in the future. I also don't know what's going to happen with airlines though, because I was having a look. Garuda is the main carrier and they obviously fly out of Jakarta.
00:10:35
Speaker
there's a fairly large amount of infrastructure to change or build like another major airport, which I couldn't see on any of the capital city stuff. Yeah. The, the option basically it's kind of like if you're, you know, if you're negotiating with like the mob, it's right. You don't have to buy a house in this entire, you can stay with the airport where it is. You can keep your house where it is. It will go underwater at some point. So it's totally up to you what you do. All options are on the table. Your call.
00:11:02
Speaker
ah so your joy say you in news and yeah We'll just be over there. If you want to come over, come over. Come over, fine. If you want to have a swim, stay where you are. Early options. Is it being subsumed because of land subsidence or global warming? I It's know there's a bunch of rivers that are running. So I think there's like 10 plus rivers that are running through it. And so I think there's a lot of overflow every time it rains. So global warming and sea your choice. level rising. So ocean plus river, a lot of ways that water is getting in there. Yeah, right. That's shocking then.
00:11:35
Speaker
That ended on a pessimistic note. so yes to take yeah Bring it back. yeah yeah come on They aim to be carbon neutral as a country by 2016 and this is part of that. That's the positive. theres a good so yeah Well done.
Introducing Planera: A New Planning Startup
00:11:51
Speaker
but back Jumping on to the next topic. ah So there's a startup that has recently raised 13 odd million US dollars um to specifically tackle ah the construction planning space. So something that we know a little bit about.
00:12:10
Speaker
um And it's basically targeting a one-on-one competition with Oracle's P6 with a different take on CPM planning. So, Planera aims to take a sort of collaborative whiteboard first um network diagram type approach to allow teams to build their plans.
00:12:31
Speaker
and to build this all-in-one platform of replacing the master schedule and some sort of short-range working schedule type environment and then a whole bunch of these other kind of master schedule specific tools like quality checks, schedule quality checks and stuff on top of it. So this platform has like the product exists today that raised some money in the last two odd years and they've just closed a around of 13 million.
00:12:59
Speaker
for what seems like the classic battle of everyone thinks something needs to happen with P6 and no one knows what's going to happen with P6 and now everyone thinks that it's a kind of eat the elephant type of scenario. Carlos, did you have a look at this and what did you think? It looks great for delivering small private projects. Like I get it. The ability to pull a team and collaboratively build a plan with maybe the experience in the room.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess maybe to to add some context to what for those that haven't heard of it. So if you imagine in Microsoft Project, you have these different views of a schedule. You have this sort of Gantt chart style view where you can have a code of table and then this Gantt view. And then you can sometimes people in in Project will switch to a different view, which is like kind of like a network diagram style view. um Plan hours like new approach is starting with the network diagram. So having this kind of open whiteboard space where people can build their plans from the network diagram and that kind of generates the Gantt chart in the backend and that's kind of like a secondary view. So the authoring of a plan in their view should happen from this kind of network diagram type interface and that's kind of the future of CPM scheduling.
Planera's Collaborative Network Approach
00:14:18
Speaker
I try and think of it in the concept of how much information do we actually need to digest and put onto a page. ah Going through what looks like a sort of flow diagram from first principles, ah the diagram itself is going to be an absolute beast on anything that's of a reasonable size. I can imagine getting lost in it because it's not this linear sequence and set of milestones that we're kind of used to, and that's probably a familiarity thing, not necessarily a can it be done. Yeah, I think the leap is I just can't see clients accepting that as a contract schedule.
00:14:47
Speaker
Well, I think one of the outputs is going to be a P6 style ah output that you could export from an XCR or an XML in that format. They look like they've replicated a lot of the scheduling engine of P6. I have not used it or tested it, but from the demos and stuff that I've seen, it looks like it has, or it is always trying to replace a lot of the scheduling engine of P6.
00:15:10
Speaker
um The thing that was interesting, I kind of take your point about like, how would it work on a larger project? All the demos look like, you know, it's a small network diagram and it's kind of, you know, it looks nice and neat and and and and an interesting way to sort of view a schedule. But one of the concepts when you get to 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 activities in a schedule,
00:15:31
Speaker
is a little bit around this idea of um information density, like how much information can you actually fit into the viewport when I'm discussing with you and how much do we need to have in the viewport in order to have a meaningful discussion about the plan. So I like this idea of you've got this infinite canvas and you can zoom out and go into this section and go over to another section. There's definitely something in this better way of navigating a schedule.
00:15:56
Speaker
It's something that we've looked at a bunch of times and it's really interesting to think about. The trade-off however with disability to kind of zoom in and out in this canvas kind of like a Miro whiteboard type experience is in order to get enough content on the page that you can actually read the, you know, the name of the task or whatever it is, you have to zoom into quite a narrow field of view for only a handful of tasks. And when you're doing a master schedule, there's, yeah, there comes this interesting question of like, how much information do you need to be able to hold in your viewport in order to understand the context of the things that you're interacting with? Like in P6, you can cram an incredible amount of stuff in the viewport by jamming stuff down. The row hides are really small.
00:16:43
Speaker
You can collapse and expand.
Challenges in Replacing P6: A Paradigm Shift?
00:16:46
Speaker
I agree. And I see the point around like, how would it work? How how does that kind of interface work on a larger? Yeah, particularly cause you're dealing with, I guess, all of the difference between font size, the shape that sits around that font, the line separating those boxes. Like when I had a quick look at the demo, there's a lot of.
00:17:07
Speaker
white space that sits in those visual network diagrams that challenges the density kind of bit. yeah So yeah, I was also wondering what are your guys views in terms of like obviously everyone ah loves to gripe about kind of p6 and the interface and those kind of things do planners.
00:17:27
Speaker
like to gripe about it, but ultimately still want to use it? Or is there an appetite to actually change the way that they plan in some kind of structurally different way? Um, you've, you've, you've touched on the like favorite beer topic for any planner. like What are we going to do about P6? P6 is ingrained on, on large projects. It's ingrained at a couple of different levels that would make it incredibly hard to displace.
00:17:56
Speaker
Um, at all in that it's like contractually ingrained. Oftentimes it's like written specifically into to contracts because there's a, there's like a knowledge about how the scheduling engine works, for example, and you don't get funny outcomes or or at least the funny outcomes you do get from the scheduling engine. Everyone knows about the funny, their predictable funny outcomes. There's also like a ah culturally ingrained position where.
00:18:21
Speaker
If you think about a master schedule, most people immediately just think of it. So it's like, it's a known brand and it's just, even if you were to give something that's 10 times better, that that brand that brand strength is just so strong. And then it's also like technically ingrained in that there's a entire ecosystem of Planners, Schedules, Consultants, Support, Training, Accreditation. There's a whole ecosystem built around that product um that ah is fighting against any change.
00:18:55
Speaker
Good or bad. um And this is not like something totally new. This is something that exists in other industries, like trying to displace like a sales force, which people know is like a fairly clunky experience for anyone that's used that as like a CRM, I guess, folks listening to this in construction might not have.
00:19:13
Speaker
user CRM, but like this is a well established, there's a lot of parallels between like ah ah sales force in a and a P6 market standard adopted by most of the biggest contractors or biggest so companies, isn't the greatest user experience, but there's an entire ecosystem built around it.
Is Planera's Innovation Enough to Challenge P6?
00:19:32
Speaker
And I think to in displace anything like that, you can't displace it with like a slightly better mousetrap. You need an entirely new paradigm shift.
00:19:42
Speaker
I actually like a lot of the ideas that the Planaro product is um playing with. The test for them will be, is what they're doing a big enough paradigm shift to to build the momentum. Yeah, minimal improvement isn't it going to change an industry. Exactly.
00:19:59
Speaker
The thing that as soon as I saw the sketchy video on the product, um the thing that I immediately thought is by visualizing it like a workflow or the the diagram, could you build optionality into schedules based on assumptions that you've already got like a plan B built into the plan?
00:20:17
Speaker
You're gonna have to ask him for a mate, you're gonna have to maybe explain that again. So we we usually have a schedule and then a list of assumptions that we use to build the schedule. But imagine if I oversimplify it, like question, yes, no, this is the path. When you have a workflow diagram, you can have multiple paths which may or may not be used based on certain criteria or assumptions being hit.
00:20:42
Speaker
you could predefine alternate routes if assumptions are or aren't true. But isn't that what logic is doing anyway? It does, but I think most people, as they state their assumption and that assumption either will or won't have cost and time associated with it.
00:20:57
Speaker
we don't have the options of assumption true or false. This is the the output or the outcome. So I feel like that diagram approach would allow you to have like alternate paths that can be predefined, which yeah, could be a really useful way to actually manage contract schedules. As a product tip. You're welcome. I'm pretty sure that's not a feature. But yeah, I think you definitely, when you look at the product and their website and everything, you have to realize that they're very early and you have to look through the like, you know, explain a video and stuff and look at the idea.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I think there's some super interesting ideas.
Improving Planning Experiences: Collaborative Focus
00:21:30
Speaker
If I was a betting man, I'd say that the idea of just an interface change yeah isn't enough of a paradigm shift. Well, that was what I was trying to think through when I looked at it. What's the big differentiator that they're trying to actually drive? Like is it, is this going to serve to better improve the speed of planning or is it going to improve the accuracy of planning or is it just going to improve the general enjoyment of the planning experience? like Do you guys have a view on which bit it's trying to tackle? And how much better that is or could be than the current kind of paradigm?
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's definitely a piece of it that looks like um the collaborative cloud-based multiple people looking and interacting with it. They've also gone down the path of kind of the all-in-one schedule thing. So you've got your master schedule and these work, they call working schedules, which in different regions have different names um in the one product. And that's a path trodden by other many other products around the world.
00:22:33
Speaker
And that's tricky because I just don't, like that's something that lots of other people have tried. So maybe that's a right assumption or a wrong assumption for them to, you know, as a, as a product strategy, but that isn't new. So if you put that aside.
00:22:48
Speaker
The other innovation that they've got seems to be around collaboratively building the schedule and letting multiple people through this and kind of new approach to building the network in a way that other people can look at and understand and you can kind of click in and then dive deeper and That is new and interesting and I think that there's some benefit being pitched around collaboration and getting a better schedule because more people are able to contribute to it. Yeah, I think if you put your feet in the shoes of the planner, are you going to do a mammoth exercise for a marginal gain?
Planera vs Alice: Philosophies in Project Planning
00:23:22
Speaker
No.
00:23:23
Speaker
if it's not a marginal gain then the new way of working is actually putting more responsibility onto the team for this collaborative almost first principles type exercise which output a great but again time poor individuals and you're trying to convince them into this new way of working which is sort of at this stage unproven untested and not a requirement from a customer it's a bit of a leap Yeah, the the ah the other way to look at it is it's almost the ah opposite ah to the sort of flag planted in the ground from Alice, for example, which are taking this alternative approach of build the set of rules that are baked into the schedule and have that generate the schedule.
First Principles Thinking in Planning
00:24:09
Speaker
This is almost going the other way and saying everyone should be contributing to everything first principles. yeah
00:24:14
Speaker
um And so that's an interesting kind of um totally opposite approach. Yeah, I imagine it definitely forces that first principle singing more. I've obviously not worked in P6, but I imagine the desire to maybe copy and paste some repeating components instead of things would be relatively high in that view.
00:24:35
Speaker
And it doesn't seem super appealing to do that in a whiteboard network diagram. Yeah. Yeah. I think though you could almost see a world where that like in in interface innovation could be, I'm not proposing anyone does this copied.
00:24:50
Speaker
and Alice could generate a schedule and then let you refine it or review it in a similar style interface. So if I was the product team at Alice, I'd be thinking carefully about... It's free product tips going around. Free product tips going around everywhere. But if I was Alice, I'd be thinking really carefully about whether or not that... Because we've talked a lot about this kind of like a canvas style interface and whether the trade-offs of it.
00:25:15
Speaker
And there's some interesting ideas, the ability but to dive deeper and deeper into these infinite um whiteboards almost.
Planera's Potential for Change in Construction Planning
00:25:22
Speaker
And as a way to have a schedule, one of the problems with a schedule being automatically generated is it's really hard. It's like me doing some work and you have to understand that work. So it's hard to understand what's being generated from that output.
00:25:37
Speaker
Does this interface give a better way for teams to understand what something like analysis is generating? And should this be like an interface that Alice is thinking about building? Anyway, product tips all around. Anything else on that before we jump off? No, good luck to the
Introduction to the Viking Wind Farm
00:25:55
Speaker
team at one hour. I really like the some of the ideas and the innovation there. Cool. Final topic on the docket is in a bit of good, I keep saying this in a bit of good news.
00:26:07
Speaker
yeah Producer Olu. In a bit of good news, we're exploring the Viking wind farm. So now it's the UK's most productive onshore wind farm.
00:26:23
Speaker
with That's the very specific description. The UK's most productive onshore wind farm. That's like the best tennis center east of this town in this place. It reminds me of the real estate agents in Australia. So they would say, we are we have the suburb record, a four bedroom house on this street that's been recently renovated with a pool in the backyard. Carve your niche and you become the best. That's it.
00:26:51
Speaker
The wind farm has 103 Vestas manufactured turbines and 443 MW of installed capacity. Viking, I love that name, will generate enough renewable energy to power nearly half a million homes annually.
00:27:07
Speaker
including the population of the Shetland Islands. With the connection coming online a couple of days ago from when we're recording this, um do we think this is a big step in the right direction for UK power? With the name it has to be, right?
00:27:25
Speaker
I think that's, uh, yeah. Does anyone know the significance of the Viking wind farm? Or was it just pick a cool name? Vikings would have landed in Scotland. So they would have, yeah, it would obvious some history. Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, really cool project. I think, yeah, so there was a big contractors involved. Bam, we're doing a lot of the heavy civils. Uh, I think Balfour doing the, uh, substations and then like Siemens McLeod and obviously best us, um, involved for anyone who's not from the UK. The Shetlands are islands that are like north of the top of Scotland. They're like in the windiest place you can imagine in the North sea. So it's like the perfect spot for producing wind and energy, wind energy ponies.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The challenge would have been laying the C cable to bring it back. But yeah, it' it's quite a big project. It looked pretty successful, um which is nice to see, and those sort of major delays. But the stat that I thought was quite crazy was there's only 100 turbines and it does 5,000 homes. 500,000? Sorry, 500,000 homes, which is 5,000 homes per wind turbine.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah, these turbines are massive. They were like a hundred and I want to say like 130, 140 meters tall, massive turbines. um The other thing that stood out to me, I don't know if if you've been following a lot of ah wind projects around the world of how much work Vestas is doing around the world. yeah and It really highlights the power of like being the best at a very specific thing and and like being in the right market at the right time.
Vestas and Renewable Energy Leadership
00:29:05
Speaker
The other day, we were talking it wasn't on the podcast, we were talking offline about this. um I think it's a company from the Netherlands, which is the global producer of these
00:29:16
Speaker
ah machines that do this highly specialized lithography, which is basically the a tool, a process to create ah microchips, like super specialized microchips. They're the only people in the world that can make these machines. They're the size of a small bus. They get purchased by companies like TSMC to make microchips. They buy, they like to buy a single one's like $30 million. dollars And they're basically the thing that's producing the thing that Nvidia is designing, right? This company is, we looked it up the other day, i want well someone will look it up in a sec, the total value of the company, but this thing is like the world's specialised best producer of this very specific thing that the world needs. And the Vestas is kind of like in a similar boat. It's super interesting. I was next to one of the Vestas factories at the weekend where they produced the blades. Yep. And the size of the barge just to carry each individual blade that they then assemble into the turbine.
00:30:14
Speaker
It's absolutely massive. Logistically, they're obviously quite difficult to build in these regions, but the return is quite good, considering they're not they're relatively inexpensive. 5000 home per turbine. Yeah, it's crazy. It makes the carbon challenge seem a bit easier.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah. Um, those numbers. so Yeah. On what you were talking about, Jase, I just finished that how big things get done. And they were talking yeah about, so Vestas is based out of Denmark, the Danes, and in particular around that headquarters, I have a feeling it was even about 150 kilometer radius.
00:30:48
Speaker
like 90% or some like some crazy number of the biggest wind producers um based out of there. And it was because 10, 20 years ago, I can't remember exactly the producers of energy over there, Danish government subsidised it and said, if you want to create a coal powered plant, you've got to also build a wind farm. And so they botched a whole bunch.
00:31:14
Speaker
learn a whole bunch, but over that period of time kind of refined this approach of how they build them, highly componentized, obviously. And so the ability to build them offshore and onshore kind of became this core competency of a bunch of Danish companies. And so, yeah, we've seen investors across a bunch of the...
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, the um the the idea of making these strategic bets as a country in a market and being and building this ecosystem around it. I remember when I was doing my my masters at business school, they were always talked about the example of like Switzerland and watchmaking, because it's not only the companies that make the watch, but all the so of suppliers to those that are all co-located that makes this super tight knit community of these ah this core competency.
00:32:00
Speaker
And it's something that like China's been doing with a couple of markets, like battery production and and um solar panel production.
Strategic National Competencies
00:32:08
Speaker
know Whenever I think about that, I think about like countries like Australia and the UK, what are the core companies that we we should be investing in and trying to cultivate other than obviously extracting minerals out of the ground.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to think for the UK following the caterpillar. Well, after having eaten a whole bunch of coal in the caterpillars today, that is a core competency. Walking around Monday afternoon, you guys are pretty good at getting to the pub on any day of the week. Yeah, pubs are a core competency. Yeah, the offices are empty, but the pubs are full. I think they must come in from home.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, work from home, that's another cool combination. You can export some of that stuff. eventual yeah No, yeah, that is ah I think a really cool project. I think the um yeah the the trend of wind energy production and obviously the overall global mega trend of energy production generally angryng green and green energy production, I think we'll see, I'll just see more and more of um the best. Does anyone see any like ah main competitors to best us on projects that we've worked with or talked to?
00:33:18
Speaker
ah Not for the term ones. I don't know enough to make a fully educated response, but most of the large ones seems to be Vestas. They're definitely the global leader.
Unique Construction of Viking Wind Farm and Episode Wrap-Up
00:33:28
Speaker
Awesome. No, they were some super cool topics and... Sorry, the really interesting part about our project. Oh, okay.
00:33:36
Speaker
Apart from the name. All labor, material, transportation was done via helicopter. So it's helicopters running all day every day because it turned a three hour, very rough drive into a 10 minute flight. So the whole project was delivered by helicopters. So like rebar for footings and everything. Everything, yeah. Really cool. We reckon the weight capacity on a helicopter is to deliver. It should be those big Chinooks. Like the military, you know the double propeller military ones? Yeah. There's a lot of petrol, yeah. That green energy. They're building a wind turbine. Four stars, like jumping to like a three star green energy. Yeah. Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, it's really cool. Even welfare facilities were dropped in by a helicopter, so. It looks like Mordor, I guess, is the most similar company. It's very rough.
00:34:20
Speaker
I feel like that's the equivalent of how everyone imagines construction might happen on like the moon or Mars. It's like hovercraft going into the moon. Yeah, right. That does make it live up to the name of the Viking wind. Yeah, because they had helicopters, didn't they? Yeah. That a reference. Sorry, man.
00:34:43
Speaker
Oh, no. Cast, you want to read us out? Yeah, yeah, no. Thank you very much, everyone, for tuning into today's show. If you did enjoy today's episode, please do like the video or follow us on your chosen podcast platform. We appreciate your support and we'll catch you all next week. Love to see you all together. gen Thanks, Mike. Thanks for joining. Cheers, Chase. Bye bye. Thanks, Chance. Bye.