Axel Destremau: Leading Efficiency and Innovation at Enerwhere

A decade ago, Axel Destremau faced a defining moment in his career. While leading a team in India, they experienced a major offshore incident—one that had the potential to result in significant asset loss and, even worse, loss of life. As the situation unfolded, Axel didn’t just focus on the immediate crisis; he saw it as a powerful reminder of the responsibility he had toward his team. It wasn’t only about managing the incident— it was about ensuring the safety of his people and learning from the event to prevent future failures.

In the aftermath, the company successfully navigated the crisis without incurring major costs and even built a stronger bond with the customer. But what stood out to Axel was the unwavering commitment of his team. This experience reinforced his belief that operational excellence was key—not just for profitability, but for ensuring the safety and growth of the people behind the work.

Axel’s approach, rooted in a culture of continuous improvement and accountability, continues to drive Enerwhere’s success in the sustainable energy sector. Through AI, innovation, and lessons learned from every challenge, Axel remains deeply focused on empowering his team, ensuring they grow alongside the company’s mission.

Championing Operational Excellence and Growth

Around 20 years ago, while overseeing multiple segments and countries in West Africa, Axel Destremau found himself managing a high-stakes offshore project. The company had won a large contract to provide equipment and services, but the costs were enormous, and any delay caused by their team could result in millions of USD in non-productive time for the customer. It was during this project that Axel realized operational excellence wasn’t just the key to profitability—it was essential for repeatable growth. Delivering consistently, above client expectations, became a core focus.

From this experience, Axel learned invaluable lessons about leadership and operational strategy. He understood the importance of surrounding himself with a competent, experienced team who valued quality. Preparing detailed plans, including contingency strategies, became crucial. He also realized the importance of completing 80% of the difficult tasks in a low-cost environment—working onshore rather than offshore whenever possible. Every deviation from the plan became an opportunity for improvement, prompting Axel to adopt a rigorous failure analysis process similar to the nuclear or aeronautical industries, ensuring that repeat failures were always prevented.

Axel’s approach to leadership, shaped by these early experiences, highlights three key qualities of a successful Chief Operating Officer. First, a strong COO surrounds themselves with a diverse team to enhance communication across the wide variety of clients they serve. Second, a successful COO is a proactive risk manager, constantly assessing, preparing for, and mitigating potential risks in operations. Finally, Axel believes that fostering strong relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees is essential to get the best from everyone and drive success. These principles continue to guide Axel in his role as COO at Enerwhere, where he fosters a culture of operational excellence, collaboration, and growth.

Building a Culture of Operational Excellence and Resilience

At Enerwhere, innovation is embedded in the company’s DNA. With a young and dynamic workforce eager to bring fresh ideas and challenge the status quo, the management team actively encourages new perspectives. They hire employees with a do-it-yourself attitude—resourceful individuals who are eager to make an impact.

Since Axel Destremau assumed his role, one of his most significant contributions has been fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Enerwhere has set ambitious quality objectives and created a dedicated Operational Excellence team focused on training employees, elevating competencies, and establishing clear, straightforward standard operating procedures (SOPs).

This culture of improvement extends to a robust reporting system where inspections, non-compliance issues, incidents, and near misses are all logged and shared openly. Any operational outage is swiftly communicated across the company, analyzed using the SCAT technique, and followed by actionable steps to ensure continuous learning. The key objective is to learn from each experience and ensure that the entire company benefits from those lessons.

A defining moment in Axel’s leadership came about ten years ago, when his team in India faced a major offshore incident that could have resulted in significant asset loss and, even worse, loss of life. Axel and his team quickly engaged with the customer, securing dedicated engineering support and applying crisis management techniques. Risks were evaluated, mitigation strategies were developed, and a dedicated team was mobilized.

Throughout the crisis, Axel emphasized constant communication and collaboration with the customer. The result was a successful claim for insurance loss by the customer, with no significant costs to Enerwhere and no damage to its reputation. In fact, the incident strengthened the relationship with the customer, reinforcing the company’s commitment to operational excellence, transparency, and crisis management.

Driving Operational Excellence and Sustainability

Axel Destremau recognizes that the success of a company’s operations hinges on a seamless partnership between the CEO and COO. He is fortunate to work closely with Alice Cowman, Enerwhere’s CEO, engaging in constant and strategic discussions about the company’s direction. Their collaboration ensures that operational KPIs are fully aligned with the company’s objectives for the short, medium, and long term. Axel’s role is to ensure that these KPIs are not only focused on financial outcomes but also on sales, marketing, and, critically, sustainability goals—the long-term vision for the company’s impact.

Axel has always held a firm belief: you can only improve what you measure. This mindset was ingrained in him early on—he was an early adopter of the NIKE running band, using it to track his running performance when he set out to improve his fitness. This personal commitment to measurement has been translated into his leadership at Enerwhere.

Axel oversees a “data team” that developed software called Enlite, which captures millions of data points daily, tracking the performance of the company’s operating equipment across sites. In addition to this, Enerwhere has an ERP system and dedicated reporting software for quality and HSE metrics. Axel views his role as central to integrating this data, making it actionable for better decision-making.

In 2024, Axel’s approach to data-driven operations led to impressive results: significant improvements in fuel efficiency, solar production, and a reduction in the number of outages caused by the company. A team of performance and optimization engineers oversees daily site operations, continually striving for peak performance and optimization.

Notably, the implementation of new dual-fuel technology on a key project has allowed Enerwhere to improve performance month after month, thanks to dedicated resources and a relentless focus on delivering savings. For Axel, data is more than just numbers—it’s the foundation for continuous improvement and operational excellence at Enerwhere.

Fostering Growth and Collaboration

At Enerwhere, people are at the heart of everything they do. Axel Destremau emphasizes the critical importance of investing in the development and growth of their team. In 2024, the company introduced in-house training and development initiatives aimed at mapping employees’ current skills against those required for future roles. This approach allows them to bridge any skills gaps and ensure that high-potential employees are identified and nurtured. One key program that Axel champions is a mentoring initiative, pairing high-potential employees with experienced mentors to foster growth and facilitate their movement across different roles within the company.

To encourage knowledge sharing and employee engagement, Enerwhere holds monthly town hall meetings, where one or two employees present a specific technical or non-technical topic to their colleagues. Axel also spends a significant amount of time engaging directly with engineers in Implementation, Maintenance, and Performance, reviewing tactics, techniques, and solutions that can help enhance their competencies.

Axel is a strong believer in cross-functional collaboration, having experienced roles in engineering, marketing, line management, and HR throughout his career. This broad exposure, he believes, is key to driving company performance. To ensure alignment across departments, Enerwhere holds weekly meetings with heads of departments—including HR, Finance, Sales, Engineering, and R&D—to discuss short- and medium-term actions that support the company’s objectives.

Despite being a relatively small company, Enerwhere fosters simple, direct communication but also encourages open discussion, with a set-up like “Openfloor” to facilitate quick and effective communication across the organization. For Axel, fostering these strong connections across departments is fundamental to creating a high-performance, responsive organization.

Navigating Uncertainty and Driving Innovation

In times of crisis and uncertainty, Axel Destremau believes that the key to success lies in effective communication across management and a well-prepared strategy. By ensuring that there is a contingency plan in place and sticking to the strategy, even when faced with unforeseen challenges, Enerwhere was able to navigate through 2024 with confidence.

Despite the uncertainty brought on by events beyond their control, the company adhered to their strategy and implemented a significant change by splitting operations into three distinct teams: one focused on project implementation, one on performance and optimization of active projects, and one on maintenance, covering reactive, preventative, and predictive maintenance. Additionally, they outsourced one of their previous in-house services. This restructuring allowed Enerwhere to enhance the quality of installations, reduce outages and incidents in running plants, and improve solar yield and fuel efficiency.

Looking ahead, Axel recognizes that AI will play a major role in shaping the future of the company and its industry. He views the adoption of AI not just as a tool but as a strategic differentiator that can position Enerwhere for success in an increasingly competitive landscape. He also anticipates that inflation in the GCC will continue, requiring the company to improve operational efficiency across all processes.

Axel stresses the importance of collaborating with emerging countries that could reshape the market dynamics and emphasizes the need to stay ahead of technological advancements. The energy sector, particularly hybrid power generation, will continue to evolve rapidly, and Axel is committed to staying vigilant, testing, and integrating new technologies that can help Enerwhere deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more effective solutions for their clients.