"Once you’ve demonstrated an ability here, you’re given the chance to run with it. And the results could make huge positive waves in our island."
Today, Nick heads up Business Intelligence, with a career journey rich in evolution, learning and meaningful change. Taking both good and bad experiences from schooling at Elizabeth College with him, Nick demonstrates how successful career paths aren’t always linear.
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Studying the Universe
Like many people, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as a career. But I did have an untapped interest in how things worked.
After A-Levels at EC, I studied ‘Physics and the Universe’ at Reading University, an experience where I uncovered a few too many of life’s mysteries, and a few too few of the Universe’s.
Graduating with a love of logic, numbers and engineering, I returned to Guernsey searching for a career spanning my interests.
From Science to Service
I began my career as an electric Bio-Medical Engineer fixing and maintaining life-saving medical kit at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital. The engineering challenges here were exciting, but an itch to run my own business lingered.
Cue my move to KPMG, one of the Big 4 Accountancy firms. Here I worked for 3 years as an auditor, experiencing the world of accountancy and gaining an ACA qualification as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.
I also enjoyed a 6-month sabbatical in KPMG’s Business Advisory department, before moving over permanently for a further 3 years. This was pivotal for me as I had the chance to dip into business strategy, regulatory remediation, mergers, acquisitions, and capital markets work.
I felt the financial knowledge and understanding was invaluable for business ownership. But working in a global Big 4 didn’t feel like the right life-long career for me as I missed the ability to positively impact everyday life that I’d had working at the hospital.
A Sustainable Transition
My ideal situation was to put my business finance skills to work on solving more tangible, real-life problems while still using my knowledge and interest in engineering and physics.
Then a unique opportunity came about when I became a Finance Business Partner for one of Guernsey’s largest local employers, providing financial support for a system that impacts and integrates with every person at every stage of their life here in Guernsey.
This diverse position included improving management information, budget planning, financial modelling, and performance analysis for investment appraisals. I could apply my engineering background to my financial skillset while making significant improvements to people’s lives every day.
When career progression opportunities came along, I moved to head up Financial Planning and Analytics, developing a cross-functional team supporting the business with more holistic financial management.
I was then appointed Finance Lead in a major high-profile IT project serving the island, giving me the experience of owning and managing several interconnected technology systems spanning engineering finance, HR, commercial sales, IT and billing.
A diversion to my career here came about just before the Covid 19 pandemic when I was offered an interesting senior role position at a small financial services company. After some time in this new role, including over the murky lockdown period, I realised it didn’t suit my interests and skills and made the decision to move on.
I then did something people often feel unable to do; I went back to my previous employer.
A Renewable Opportunity
Once you’ve demonstrated an ability here, you’re given the chance to run with it. And the results could make huge positive waves in our island.
I returned to working four days a week as a Data Architect, tapping into a previously underused opportunity. I now lead a newly created Business Intelligence department to help advance company capabilities through putting its data to work, designing and engineering data models to improve business, and life here in Guernsey.
Our flexible working policy also meant I have freedom to study a combined apprenticeship and master’s degree in data science and to maintain a position as a Non-Executive Director for a small local firm.
I believe the more we can extract value from our data, the more a business can reduce company and customer costs. We can provide a more efficient service, uncover and resolve problems more quickly, and improve operations to help reduce our carbon emissions.
Looking to the future, I’m hoping to use my master’s degree to benefit the Company and influence and future of power.
I’m currently working on developing artificial neural network capable of forecasting the hourly electricity demand across different points in the island’s electricity network, and my hope is to further use their skills to benefit other areas of the business into the future.
The ultimate outcome is better management of electricity that benefits islanders both in terms of electricity’s cost and carbon footprint.
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Why I work here
I can guarantee my job impacts your life because of the work we do here at Guernsey Electricity Limited.
The term ‘no two days are ever the same’ gets bandied around so often, but in such a close company operating in an ever-evolving industry based, there’s no other way to describe it.
Before working here, I hadn’t considered GEL as somewhere with diverse career development opportunities. You also get to know something about every part of a business which touches every person’s life, and every day you can help drive our planet’s transition to more sustainable energy.
An eye-opener for me was understanding more about energy equitability for customers and the intermittent nature of on-island renewables. Working within GEL has given me a much better appreciation for the real-life decisions made to help run and power a community.
I also really enjoy working with such a wide variety of people, both internally across our diverse workforce and with external contractors.
There’s a lot of significant investment needed to maintain Guernsey’s power station, the subsea importation cable, substations, and the thousands of other assets spread across the island, meaning a huge amount of long- and short-term planning and investment is needed. This gives employees many opportunities to grow and develop.
My future is Guernsey’s future. When you’re part of the sustainable energy transition, you help build better sustainability into everyday life. Whether that’s through engineering, project management, financial services, electrical trade or business intelligence
Interested in being part of the sustainable energy transition? Visit our careers page to find out more about our latest vacancies
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