Transpower seeks millions in penalties for pylon collapse

Opinion: When Mark Ryall visited the collapsed Glorit power pylon in the hours after an untrained worker removed the nuts from three of its baseplates, he was “gutted”.
Transpower’s executive general manager of grid delivery says he could not comprehend how the maintenance team could have made such a fundamental and far-reaching mistake as to unsecure all those base plates at the same time.
But beyond that critical cock-up, this week’s Electricity Authority report into the pylon collapse has raised as many questions as it answers. There is increased doubt about the escalation of concerns within Transpower, about its communications with maintenance contractor Omexom, and about what Omexom’s leadership knew of its untrained and poorly supervised workers’ wildly dangerous practices.
Those questions are not unanswerable. They could be answered – but Omexom has now decided to not release its report into the incident.
When Transpower published its own report on August 1, Ryall told me the completion and publication of Omexom’s report was imminent. “We are waiting on Omexom’s report to understand exactly how the sequence of events have occurred, to understand how a crew that was less competent than they should have been did a job without sufficient supervision.”
I spoke to Ryall again at the end of August, and he reiterated it should be delivered and published within weeks.
But now, fearing the liability that might ensue, Omexom is refusing to disclose the report publicly – or even to the Electricity Authority.
The authority doesn’t hide its dismay at the contractor’s obduracy: “Unfortunately, the authority was not able to include information from Omexom’s draft ICAM (Incident Cause Analysis Method) report into the incident,” the inquiry finds.
“While Omexom has provided a copy of that report in draft to Transpower, Omexom has claimed legal privilege over it, and has declined to waive privilege to any part of that report for the purposes of this review. We cannot compel Omexom to provide information as it is not an industry participant.”
What seems clear from those reports that have been published is that Omexom was knowingly putting crews on maintenance jobs who hadn’t been through Grid Skills or internal training courses. What is not clear is how many pylons had been unbolted the same way. Or how much Omexom knew about discussion of the training module for foundation painting after baseplate maintenance – a matter identified by a senior Transpower engineer in 2021.
Transpower has supplied Newsroom a copy of that 2021 email. “It appears that there is a gap of knowledge in the lines mechanical crews that are doing these foundation works,” the principal engineer wrote.
He recommended Omexom and other contractors train their crews and give them refreshers every 12 months. He was assured that would be raised with the governance board but, according to Ryall, it was never escalated.
Omexom is owned by Vinci Energies, a French energy conglomerate with a turnover of nearly $30 billion a year. Suzanne Stephenson, whose “reputation management” firm Magnifi has been retained to, well, manage Omexom’s battered reputation, is refusing to front up beleaguered managing director Mornez Green for any interviews. Nor is he answering the phone, or returning calls.
But in a one-sentence response to Newsroom’s questions, Green reiterates that the report is legally privileged.
Those are weasel words. This is not about legal privilege. This is about legal liability. And bear in mind, the ensuing outage cut power to 88,000 homes and businesses, causing economic losses of up to $80m.
I spoke to Ryall again this morning. He tells me Transpower has now commenced action to recover millions of dollars from Omexom, in accordance with the penalty clauses in their contract.
“We have notified Omexom that we see them as failing in this piece of work,” he says. “That one pylon, given the work to put the temporary towers up and then to come back and put the permanent tower back in place, is in the millions.”
And while he continues to maintain that Transpower cannot and will not compensate Northland customers and consumers for the large losses they incurred in the outage, he reveals Transpower and Omexom together will be announcing a large “investment” through its Northland CommunityCare Fund, which supports schools, iwi and hapū, and community groups.
Ryall says Transpower has no legal liability to compensate consumers – but is there a moral or ethical responsibility? “I can’t really answer that, sorry. We’re absolutely gutted by the incident. We understand the impact on consumers, and you know, we’re doing everything to make it right that we can.”