Reflections … Positioning APM for Future Growth through Excellence

“Hope is not a strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality.” John C. Maxwell

The growth of our APM business should be important to all of us. In simple terms, growth creates opportunities … opportunities to provide our customers with innovative services and products, which in turn generates meaningful work for our employees. Growth promotes our competitiveness as a business and opens up potential for all of our people. I asked Charles Nagley, our APM Chief Growth Director, to share his vision with us about the key growth opportunities for APM. Below is his insight for our consideration and engagement with the strategies.

When you think of growth strategy at APM, what does it mean to you? Does it mean doing more of the same work? Does it mean working in different industries or on different equipment? Or does it mean promoting new crafts or using new technologies as others become antiquated? Maybe it’s a combination of them all. However you look at it, if we aren’t strategizing to grow, we will become obsolete in our craft and irrelevant to our customers.

When people think about growth, they usually think about numbers... our margins, our market share, our manhours and so on. I have three numbers for you… 1, 3, and 5. We believe that these three numbers can create growth for APM. Allow me to share my thoughts with you.

Number 1:

The number 1 can stand for many things, but to me it represents: unity, being #1, and ultimately having a 1-year growth strategy.

• We have to be united as a team, in our purpose (our WHY), in our expectations (our WHAT), and in our values (our HOW).

• We have to strive to be the “Best” in our craft, whether you are an apprentice millwright or the CEO; we each have an equally important role to play. As you are already aware, we are doubling down on improving our safety culture and overall performance using Commitment Based Safety (CBS) as the key enabler. Our safety performance is the entry ticket in this industry, and we must have it or we will not grow.

• We have to have an actively worked 1-year growth strategy that promotes our vision. This year we have focused on three primary areas to deliver growth in the short term.

  • In the Gas business, we have our affectionately termed “TEX-MEX” strategy, where we are combining two growth strategies to penetrate the Texas area to grow within our backyard and expand into Latin America by creating core teams who will consistently serve these regions. By building the right teams to drive positive outcomes for our customers in these areas, we will increase our market share over time.

  • In our Boiler business, we are modifying our strategy in terms of how we win with our customers across North America. With strong customer relationships and deep expertise, our Superintendents are poised to be redeployed this summer to visit with customers to discuss their maintenance needs, which should lead to added work opportunities for our teams.

  • In our Specialty business, we are working diligently to secure more internal GE work. I will cover this in more detail below.

Number 3:

The number 3 stands for 3rd party strategy, which is also the 3rd tenet in our 1-year growth strategy. Across all GE Power businesses, a significant amount of money is spent on non-GE 3rd party vendors in areas such as piping, welding, and machining, where APM has the capability, union collaboration, and bandwidth to execute. The service teams are just unaware of our offerings. Within our Specialty Services business, we are heavily marketing within these existing GE Power businesses through re-education to build awareness of our capabilities. We will recapture this work for our businesses.

Number 5:

The number 5 stand for a 5-year vision. Our growth strategy must complement this vision and it is core to our APM “FLEET” strategy of “Expanding into Strategic Markets”. This involves a thoughtful review of our business and where we need to be positioned to win for the next 10+ years. We are reviewing capability expansions like adding electrical & hybrid/multi-skill resources to new strategic markets like batteries, aero, hydro, and other renewables. We are also developing strategic customer relationships that could provide multi-year agreements as well as analyzing how step changes in technology (both industry & APM AirTime) will impact or accelerate the businesses we are in so that we are proactive and prepared to take action.

As you can now see, we are working to grow intentionally and strategically in the current year and for the years to come. We will continue to evaluate and prioritize all of our growth opportunities, but we need your continued help to share what you hear and stay engaged with our business. Without your leadership and expertise in the field, we have nothing to expand upon. So, know that what you do on a daily basis to create our special APM brand is extremely important to our customers and our APM.

Thank you Charles for the meaningful insight on growth opportunities for our organization in the immediate future and long term. We are both eager to hear feedback and ideas from the business.

—Jake