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UtILItY WeeK | 10th - 16th OctOber 2014 | 9 Interview A s music legend Kate Bush was due to go on stage at London's Hammersmith Apollo at 7pm on a recent Friday night, the lights went out. The power failure could have meant sending home 3,000 frustrated fans – but a UK Power Networks engineer, in the area having finished his shi, took it upon himself to hot-foot down to the theatre with a back-up generator so the show could go on. Basil Scarsella tells Utility Week the story with a smile. It makes a pleasant change from tales of storms, select committees and exploding pavements – the usual lot of the chief executive of UK Power Networks (UKPN), one of the country's largest distribution network opera- tors, serving more than eight million customers, includ- ing those in the London region. Indeed, he's had a tough year, with the fallout from the Christmas storms hitting UKPN particularly hard, swily followed by the select committee inquiry on costs, and this summer the news that Ofgem was seeking to slice 9 per cent, or £600 mil- lion, from its business plan for the next eight years. Despite these trials, Scarsella's down-to-earth good humour is in evidence as he outlines his pride in the business's turnaround, his concerns over the regulator's dra determinations and his views on the changing role of networks. It's almost four years to the day since Scarsella suc- cessfully completed the bid for UK Power Networks, which he led on behalf of Hong Kong investor Cheung Kong Infrastructure (CKI; also the owner of Northum- brian Water). Italy-born Australian Scarsella had a his- tory of working for the group as chief executive of ETSA Utilities (now South Australia Power Network). In 2009, when CKI bought UK assets, he moved to the UK as chief executive of Northern Gas Networks, during which time he also advised the company on its acquisitions. "I led the bidding process, and together with advis- ers, we came up with the price which, through proper governance, the owners paid," he says. "But then I was asked to go and run it and deliver on those assumptions, which tends to focus the mind!" By anyone's standards, it has been a success. Scar- sella is widely credited with having turned around the business. He takes a quiet pride in the achievement and particularly in his workforce: "We took over a business that, to be fair and without being critical of the past, wasn't that well regarded in the market and the perfor- mance wasn't as good as it could have been… We're now seen as one of the most reliable networks in the UK." UKPN has in effect begun the transition from a traditional engineering business to one focused on its customers as well as its assets. How has Scarsella achieved this? "We've changed the culture of the business to ensure that employees are focused on the core responsibility of UKPN. Putting it simply, that is to keep the lights on and when the lights go out, to restore supply safely but as quickly as possible." He makes it sound easy, but in an organisation where the "40-plus club" (those who have been in the business for more than four decades) numbers in excess of 700, culture change is anything but. "How do you go about changing the culture? By first establishing a clear vision for the organisation, communicating that vision right across all areas of