Allen and Joel had a great time in New Orleans talking to Gio Scialdone, President of 3S Lift Americas. 3S Lift has 7,000 Climb Auto Systems across America, helping technicians to get the job done quickly and safely.

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3S Lift Interview

Gio Scialdone: We’re here again 

Allen Hall: We’re at ACP 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana with Gio Scialdone from 3S Lift. If you don’t know 3S Lift, you’re missing out on so much 3S Lift is about. Saving technicians and making sure they get up and down towers safely and efficiently. Gio, welcome back to the program.

Gio Scialdone: Thank you for having me, Allen. Joel, nice to meet you.

Allen Hall: You as well. You know, this has been a really busy show compared to San Antonio last year. Yeah, I think so. I think roughly double the amount of people from what I can tell you. I assume you guys have been busy. I’ve been by your booth a couple of times.

There’s a lot of people thinking about 

Gio Scialdone: technicians this week. I think people have to be thinking about technicians. If you, if you, if you look backwards and you look forward in terms of the operational existing towers, you have to think about technicians for your existing fleets. Yeah. Yeah. You look at the forward projections of the, the, the build out plan.

You have to think about who are the people that are gonna work at these places. Yeah. Um, you know, last time we talked about the, the competition, indirect competition that some of these workers could. Go be an Amazon truck driver and make 25 or 30 bucks now. Yeah, absolutely. They don’t have to climb a winter run tower.

Yeah. You know, that’s tough work. So there’s some competition out there, not just inside the industry, but certainly outside. 

Joel Saxum: So we know that, like across the industry, of course, it’s been the word for a long time. We’ve talked to a lot of people around the show about just the shortage of technicians. Yeah.

Right. And every and, and you’re starting to see, which is great. A lot of companies pop up. Training, right? Hey, we’re opening a GWO training center. We’re opening this training center. We’re gonna, there’s a blade repair center opening up in, in Tennessee, so that’s fantastic to bolster the whole fill of, of technicians into the industry.

Well, once they’re there. So 3S Lift is taken care of ’em in another 

Gio Scialdone: step. I think. I think one, you know, workforce development is, is something that we talk about a lot. Our customers are talking about a lot. You, you’re the, the recruitment, like you’re talking about I is, is step one and the retention is really the hardest part.

Yeah. Right. Um, you could recruit people with probably a good paying job and an exciting job to go up and down a tower and you get to do mechanical, electrical work. Um, every six months maybe. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Make it tired. It’s hard. It gets hard, it 

Gio Scialdone: gets tired. It’s a war of attrition, right? It is. Indeed. Has 700 and something open Wind tech jobs today in, right now, in America right now.

Yeah. Um, and, you know, our, our product is Climb Auto System, lift Retrofittable to every ladder. Um, we see customers improving their ability to retain tech. Yeah. And, and, and, and that’s, you know, ultimately that’s leading. To an improvement in operational efficiency too. Right? Right. Keep the people longer, keep them happier at their job, which is hard to do.

Yeah. Um, and they’re probably gonna do better at it. And I think we’ve seen some data that that proves 

Joel Saxum: that, you know? Yeah. Off air. You had mentioned morale. Morale on a team, right. You may have, you may have traveling groups that come in, like the blade repair guys bounce from site to site to site. You know how happy they are to show up on a site and they’re like, oh man, this site’s got lift.

You know what I mean? Like, their, their days just got easier. I know, right? That and, uh, you know, we, we also talked about some places like they have resident, uh, service technicians or an o and m contract where if they, those guys get to go up and down a tower every day, uh, on a lift, they would much rather do that than a climb assist or just climbing a ladder, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, the ladders are tough. Even a short tower, 72 meters, 80 meters is, that’s a long 

Gio Scialdone: ways. The majority of our retrofits are on 80 meter towers still. There you go. You know, I mean, the repower, the repower boom happening now is a lot of those towers are 80 meters, and what a better time to install a lift than when you’re doing a repower.

You’re opening up, sometimes you can, you can add to the, the, the, the sort of repower equation, uh, to qualify by adding a lift. Um, you know, we, we, we think that there’s, there’s probably room for a lot more lifts in the field. We think that that, um, new construction, certainly there’s options. There’s service lifts, there’s climb auto systems, right?

Um, we have, uh, I think maybe 1000 or more new construction units being installed this year. Nice. Whoa. Significant amount. Yeah. Good for you guys. Um, 6,000 total. By the end of the year, we’ll have 10,000. So I, I don’t know how many turbines are there? 73,000? 70,000 in the state. In US we’re, we’re one. We’ll be one seventh by the end of the year.

That’s 

Joel Saxum: 15% market address. Yeah. 

Gio Scialdone: That’s great. Yeah. And I think, you know, the, the eyes of the owner operators and, and not just the operators too, but the asset owners. Yeah. They have long-term service agreements. They care about their ability to, uh, they’re not just. Putting back to the, uh, o and m contract saying, well, it’s your job.

Figure it out. No, let, let’s work together. And I think that’s, that’s a nice thing too, seeing the collaboration between some of the owners and the, and the operators on it. Right. 

Allen Hall: Obviously in this conference, when I stop at different booths, you see a couple of different things. A lot of GW o training, which is all about safety.

So a lot of the, uh, maintenance groups are doing internal. Safety training. Yeah. Uh, when you talk to operators, one of the first things that pops up is safety. You see helmet companies, gear companies, uh, everybody is really concerned about safety because there’s so few technicians. You can’t afford to have somebody out in the cost of that as extraordinary.

You, you want to take care of your technicians at this point. There’s a better, massive push 10 years ago. Little more wild west. I I, the way I saw it, right. Uh, probably way the world saw it. The, the technicians were kind of free to do their own thing a little bit. And sometimes safety lacks and you see that on LinkedIn.

Every once in a while you see some 

Joel Saxum: LinkedIn, you still see some random videos that are not now 

Allen Hall: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So the, the tide has shifted. Yeah. A good deal into more safety. And I think that makes sense. And 3S Lift is part of that safety 

Gio Scialdone: equation. I already mentioned Gwo. We’re, we’re partnering with GW O Safety.

Um, uh, uh, trainers. Our lift, our climb auto system is in their training centers. Oh, that’s genius. Yeah. And they’re starting to offer that as an add-on. Yeah, sure. Right. So certified on this? Yeah, yeah. Certify it. Yeah. No, we train them to provide a sort of co-branded certification, um, as an add-on. It’s not a g it’s not a G W O course.

Right. But it’s performed by a GWO certified trainer. Okay. And it’s an add-on. And, and, you know, the, the safety piece is huge because. We, we’ve seen, and you know, I’ve traveled to so many sites like you guys have, and you, you see, um, sort of a unicorn when you see some of the older techs and you, and you’re like, Hey, hey, well you’ve been here, seen some things 12 years.

Like Yeah. How you doing? And, and some of the things we still hear like, wow, we got a couple of knee surgeries and Yeah, that’s pretty, you know, I wish this thing, I wish this thing was around 10 years ago. Yeah, that’s what I hear. Yeah. You know, but it’s here now and I think, I hope and we hope that, 10 years from now when we’re visiting there, the, the, the discussion’s a little flipped and it’s really thankful that we got these lifts and our company invested in our safety.

Mm-hmm. Because I wouldn’t be here if, right now. Yeah, absolutely. You know, looking backwards. So I think that’s a, you know, and that’s, that’s job. There’s a job creation aspect, right? Yep. Jobs, sustainability. We’re talking about, you know, good paying jobs in. Um, areas that may not have a ton of opportunity and, and a lot of more work, what a better job to have.

Yeah. And let’s keep these people in those jobs. Older technicians, demographics, more women can, can, we are seeing, uh, enabled to technicians to be in the job. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got a, we’ve got a utility customer who’s retiring coal plants. They’re, they have their own transitional program to take some of their coal.

Text and move them into wind. Oh, that’s cool. And, and, you know, uh, one of the things that’s beneficial is to have a lift. You know, they’re 50 years old. Yeah. 

Joel Saxum: Right. Yeah. You’ve been around for a while. Yeah. I think of it like, you know, this is a, this is an innovation we’re seeing that you guys have put out 3S Lift within the wind industry, but if you think into the, the general industry, I have a lot of friends that have bad backs and bad knees in their 35 and 40, right.

That have been pouring concrete and building homes and roofing, and doing all these things their whole lives. And when things have come along within those industries, it changed the way they are. You see the wheelbarrows with just like, they got electric batteries in ’em now. Yes. Like, man, when I was young and I was wheeling concrete, I wish I had that so much.

I know, right? So it’s kind of the same concept. Right? Well the 

Gio Scialdone: clima you remember when that was starting, right? Right. Um, you know, one of my first projects in 2010, there was, there wasn’t, cists weren’t prevalent. Um, I think probably historically, maybe 13, 14, 15, they started to come around and generally speaking, Worst standard in the 1516 timeframe.

Um, and I kind of liken our lift now. I hope that that’s the new standard. You know, I think from a operational cost effectiveness, it’s, it’s there. It’s like I was doing like the Blackberry iPhone analogy for Clima assist to Sure. On Lyft, right? Like the Blackberry still, you probably still get away with it.

Yeah, I know they’re not making it anymore probably, but, Look, a, a non-smart phone is still effective in some way. Yeah, sure. I think that’s the clima assist. I think you’re still climbing, you know, um, and, and this, this eliminates that altogether. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we, we met with some, one of our customers who, who works on the, the ts uh, uh, the lights on the top.

I kept, I was thinking tsa F faa F FAA lights. Yeah. He was doing, uh, lights, light change out. It’s an hour job, right? Okay. But it’s, he did, he can do four in a day. He could do 10 or 12 in a day with the lifts. So think about the, the downward, uh, or sort of downstream effect, the efficiency of it, not just on the owner operator, but some of the service provider.

The bottom line, 

Joel Saxum: right? The om cost, like you could quantify an ROI for it based on the fact that if I have to climb three towers a day to, you know, check the oil, you know, do oil changes. Okay? Now I can do five. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So there’s an ROI bonus right 

Gio Scialdone: there, right? There is, there is. And you know, one of the other things I’ll hit on, maybe you got some other topics, but I went to the opening ceremony, um, yesterday and General Stan, Mick McChrystal.

McChrystal. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Stan McChrystal. Uh, he, he talked about culture and you know, I’ve, having been in this role with threes for five years and seen us grow from zero installations to 6,000, I’ve seen. The development of those cultures ebb and flow over time, and he defined culture, I think in some way of, of a subset or a combination of the behaviors of the employees at a company.

Right. How do they behave? That is your culture. Yep. Ultimately, this product helps the technicians and they will feel, uh, valued. You know? Yeah. They will feel valued. And, and that is a, that is a, a feeling of gratefulness that you wanna work for those companies. And we’ve seen the companies that are investing in this product, having, uh, a lot more applications to go work for them.

Um, their culture, their morale collectively is, is improving. And I think they’re seeing the benefit of that operationally, financially as well. Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of a full circle. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Wait until we get offshore and the towers are 160 meters. 

Gio Scialdone: I know. Oh, yeah. I know. They’re gonna have huge, huge service lifts that take three people up at a time, you know?

Yeah. We, we’ve, we’ve thought about, I mean, we’re, we’re in the offshore space as well. Yeah. Uh, qualifying our service lifts, 3S does more than just the climb auto system. We’re selling blade maintenance platforms. Um, you know, uh, accessories, safety systems, rescue devices, self-checking lifelines, these kind of things.

Right now our, our bread and butter is, is, is the lift, and that’s really helping us get noticed on other, other aspects for everything else. Oh, sure. Sure. 

Allen Hall: Joel and I had talked a couple of each ago and we were talking about technicians and getting some feedback from technicians like, how’s it going 

Gio Scialdone: out there?

Yeah. And business. The real feedback was 

Allen Hall: hard push. Yeah. Technicians are struggling, right? Yeah. It’s hard. They are. And plus the cyclical nature of the business where you’re working from spring to fall and then you gotta find a second job sort of thing. Yeah. It’s a tough life. Yeah. A 

Joel Saxum: lot of Right. A lot of the feedback was.

We’re being asked to do what? Takes 12 hours in eight because we’re short-staffed. Don’t have enough people. Right. Don’t have enough people. There’s not enough hours in the day to get done what we have to do, but corporate won’t give us extra personnel because of o and m. 

Allen Hall: Right? Right. People are expensive.

Equipment is not, that’s what’s a one time loss. The lift 

Gio Scialdone: makes sense. Right? Yeah, I know. I think, I think, and that has taken time for us to convince some of those customers. Yeah. To, to retrofit. With our, with our, unfortunately, sometimes it’s taken, um, you know, someone to pull a fire alarm, like, oh man, we only have three techs right now and we need six, and this has been going on for months.

Yeah, we really need something 

Joel Saxum: now. What can we, what’s a stop gap? What can we do to fix this? Right. Yeah. 

Gio Scialdone: Yeah. And, and that was, I think, you know, a year or two, couple years ago that was happening. Now I’m seeing customers really get out in front. And seeing it, I think it’s a good thing. Like they’re, they’re, they’re looking at, um, you know, the, what the OEMs are doing.

The OEMs are offering this product to their customers as well. Sure. We see some OEMs, uh, offering an improved service rate. Right. Really. Hey, Mr. Customer, we’ll give you a long-term service price here. If you install a CL assist, we’ll give you a service price here. If you buy a 3S lift. Climb Auto System.

Oh, that’s sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it makes total six. Makes sense. The oem, the OEM is gonna benefit because they may be able to have a lower headcount at that site. Right. They can do more with less, right? Yep. Um, that, that’s a cost benefit. Yeah. And you know they’re gonna be more efficient and effective to meet their contractual.

Availability demands, things like that. It was 

Joel Saxum: like you had mentioned the, the last climb of the day concept. Right. Oh 

Gio Scialdone: 3:00 PM climb, you know, the 3:00 PM climb. Yeah. The Saturday climb. There’s some sites in, um, you know, some sites that aren’t, uh, we were talking to a customer has some small turbines. I shouldn’t say small, small sites, four or five spread out.

There’s not a site office. They’re not, uh, and it’s common in Europe, right? Yeah. Where they’re, where they’re spread out. Europe mostly has services. Yeah. Um, we think that this customer’s gonna benefit from the retrofit cuz a technicians who’s mobilizing or deployed right away can get right to work, go right up tower not, and maybe there’s three or four things they need to do in each of those towers.

They’re not limited by climbing anymore. Now there’s a, there’s a benefit there. Absolutely. So, Well, uh, this is 

Allen Hall: really lightning. I mean, some, some of the things you and I have been hearing, Joel Yeah, yeah. Very direct feedback. Geo’s really feeding into that this the same concept, right? That, that, uh, as an industry, it’s gonna be changing a lot.

I, I’m, it’s good to hear that operators and owners are starting to put the client model system in just to get rid of the technician issues. Getting to a couple of thousand units is 

Gio Scialdone: big. Yeah. The, the best part now Allen is, is our, our team is gelling. The 3S Lift team is, you know, we’ve got a 40,000 square foot warehouse.

Operationally we need to support the industry. Yep. And that means with, uh, the right troubleshooting engineering teams, which we have, we’ve got the right project management teams we’re gonna be installing at 50 sites in the next eight months. Wow. Wow. So that’s 50 deliveries and 50, um, commissioning and 50 trainings on site.

So we now have, You know, we have 40 technicians that install these, we, we leverage some partnerships with, but it’s been fun to see, um, sort of the fruits of our labor over the last couple years, grow and see our customers really, um, you know, be the beneficiary of, of what we think is just an, an awesome product.

You know? Congrats on the hard work. Yeah. Thanks man. Paying off, man. Thanks for having us for, again. 

Allen Hall: So how, how does, uh, an operator owner. Find 3S Lift. What’s the best way to find 3S?

Gio Scialdone:  You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find at info@3slift.com. Okay. Um, you know, I’m very active. I get, I, I think my, there’s a in info email address that comes right to me and I dispatch that to her, whichever sales team we need to.

So, um, yeah, we can, uh, you know, we’re pretty active on the, on the web, so Yeah, easy, easy to get ahold of. Perfect. 

Allen Hall: Well, Gio, it’s great to see you in New Orleans. Glad you could make this show. This is fantastic, and it’s great to hear the success of 3S Lift. Fantastic. 

Gio Scialdone: Yeah. Thank you guys for having me again.

It was awesome. Absolutely.