Meet the Team – Voith

Workers may have met some of the 25 friendly Voith team members on our remote sites and in Cooma. As construction winds down in the future, and the Snowy 2.0 commissioning phase ramps up, the Voith workforce will increase about five-fold.

Lead commissioning engineer Andreas Benig joined Voith in 2017 and has served in Austria, the US, Canada and Germany before accepting this posting to Australia. Like so many engineers, it is the great challenges of Snowy 2.0 that attracted him.

Administrator Randi Franko, with her husband John (Voith’s Snowy 2.0’s site manager) says the friendly welcome is what has made her transition to this project, and Australia, enjoyable.

“This is an amazing experience so far. I am honored to be a part of this legacy project,” Randi said.

Voith’s Snowy 2.0 production manager Glen Pirot said this is his fourth underground hydro construction project. The company has executed hundreds of projects worldwide and some have been located within a mountain or underground.

Voith’s contribution to Snowy 2.0 includes installing and commissioning six power units, mechanical and electrical plant, a substation with a gas insulated switch, and the intake gates at Tantangara and Talbingo.

“Our current site staff consists of HSE, quality, scheduling, engineering, and site management personnel,” Glen said.

“We have three subcontractors supporting us right now in logistics and electrical needs, embedded piping, and the installation of scaffold enclosures around the large components in our laydown yard.”

Snowy 2.0 is establishing Voith’s Australian hydro division. The German-based company already had paper and turbo divisions in the Australian market.

Thanks Voith, for joining our Snowy Delivery team!