A.K.｜Employee Interview｜Vena Energy Japan Recruiting Site

Work that has a positive impact on our children's generation

Before joining Vena Energy, I was a field manager dealing with machinery and equipment of commercial establishments. I had nothing to complain about the workplace environment or the job itself, but the birth of my child changed how I see the future. I started to strongly feel "I want to do a job that could have a positive impact on our children’s generation." Then, in the course of exploring new fields, I became fascinated by the world of renewable energy.

At that time, however, I knew almost nothing about solar power plants. I decided to start from what I could and studied about power plant facilities on a self-education basis, and in parallel I was doing a research to find a new job. As a result, I got connected to and found Vena Energy. What has drawn my attention first was the momentum and growth potential of its business, which was building new power plants one after another across the country. In addition, I also liked the company’s policy to focus on "local contribution" and do clean work rooted in local communities.

And one more thing. It was the atmosphere of the interview by my direct boss that strongly encouraged me to join the company. When we think about our careers in the long run, comfortable human relationships and a pleasant working environment are important factors. In that respect, this company's interview had a casual style where both sides could discuss anything with each other, and I was able to feel quite naturally that "I want to work with these people." In fact, since I joined the company, the environment has been exactly what I imagined and I can work in spontaneity, so I think my judgment at the time was right.

Future

Responsibility and rewards of supporting dynamic business

I am part of the Operations & Maintenance team, which is responsible for managing and maintaining solar power plants that have started commercial operations. Our mission is to support the safe and stable operation of tens of thousands of power generation modules and achieve high-level production of electricity.

Members of our team are stationed at offices across the country, and in order to achieve high availability, strive to prevent troubles from occurring through regular maintenance and do repair work in case a trouble does occur. Another important part of our job is to play the role as a "person in charge of communication with the local community," thus we also visit landowners for greetings, offer lectures on renewable energy at a local high school, and so on.

From the technical standpoint, solar power generation facilities consist mostly of simple devices, thus I was able to quickly become familiar with the onsite work even though I came from a different industry. On the other hand, the difference from my previous job is how dynamic the work is. A sweeping vista of many solar panels arranged on a huge piece of land is quite impressive.

Naturally, the responsibility of engineers like us is large, but there is no "secret technique" in this world to keep the availability high. Furthermore, some of our power plants are located on the surface of a mountain, while some others are located in snowfall areas. Every plant has its own unique environment. For this reason, the inspection and maintenance know-how specific to each area is accumulated and the information is shared from senior staff to more junior ones. Doing day-to-day work steadily and carefully based on such knowledge - this is the fastest way to achieve good results, and also the reason why we feel our job is worthwhile.

Mission

Because we are an organization that is still incomplete, we can give shape to our ideas

From the viewpoint of the real joy of working here, I feel that "being incomplete" is another attractive feature. For example, I am currently in charge of managing the offices in Ibaraki and Tochigi as a senior manager, but we do not have any rigid rules about team building, like "this is how we have always been doing it since long ago."

Based on the site-comes-first concept, our superiors give us a great deal of discretion, which allows us to come up with creative ideas focusing on "building an environment in which all engineers can work comfortably and grow." It is not always easy to manage and provide guidance to each member taking into account his/her technical capabilities and individual characteristics, but that is why this job is full of interesting aspects which we do not see elsewhere.

I think we will continue to expand our organization in line with our business growth, so I also want to further brush up my management skills and ability to come up with great ideas. My current goal is to contribute to creating an environment in which each and every employee on-site can work comfortably.

I think this company would be an ideal workplace for those who will join us and seek to actively provide their opinions and realize ideas without fear of failure. It is also a workplace I can recommend to those who want to focus on what they are supposed to do, in an environment not constrained by formalities or inefficient tasks. Join us and make full use of the capabilities you have built so far.

Idea