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Simon Knapp

PartnerHamburg

Supports companies in the global energy and materials sector with holistic transformation programs on operational efficiency and effectiveness as well as capital-project portfolio management and execution

Simon is a partner in McKinsey’s Hamburg office and a member of our Operations Practice. With a professional background in utilities, chemicals, oil and gas, and basic materials, he helps businesses elevate their performance through digital, operational, and capital-expenditure (capex) programs.

Simon’s experience ranges from digital design and transformation to the optimization of on-the-ground operations and plant and fleet maintenance. His recent client projects include the following:

  • Holistic performance transformation of a top-tier Western European integrated steel mill, including operations, maintenance, procurement, commercial, and selling, general, and administrative excellence
  • Helping to design a contracting strategy, organization, and governance for a multibillion-euro high-voltage direct-current transmission project
  • Advising a US utility on postmerger integration and the transformation of operations, maintenance, and outage in a fleet of 20 coal-fired and combined-cycle gas-turbine power plants
  • Improving outage performance and operational efficiency for a fleet of African power plants to elevate output in a market of short energy supply
  • Working with an African utility to implement digital lean-construction measures, including a cloud control tower and “digital twin” technologies in a coal-fired air-cooled power plant, and compressing the schedule by more than 6 months
  • Planning the decommissioning of a nuclear-power plant for a multinational operator, including creating and validating the business case and identifying operational and regulatory requirements for a cost-effective transition.

Simon also contributes to McKinsey’s in-house work on operational tools and methods, and he helped develop our 48-hour diagnostic for capex project management.

Published work

Decarbonizing the chemical industry,” McKinsey & Company, April 2023

Education

INSEAD
MBA, business administration

Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel
MS, theoretical and business chemistry
BSc, theoretical chemistry