Thirty-three years from a station switchboard to a network control room

Mandate

Bring field operations, network control, vegetation management and emergency management under one executive after the 2019–20 fires, and make the network safer on its worst fire days without making it less dependable on the others.

Outcomes

• Published a Catastrophic-day de-energisation rule for 47 feeders in 2022, with backup supply for 31 water pumping sites and 19 telecommunications sites; used on three days without an ignition from a de-energised line.
• Reduced non-compliant vegetation spans in high bushfire-risk areas from 11% to 1.8% by spring 2024 after moving contractors to payment by certified span.
• Met 74% of published restoration ranges in the November 2024 storm, against 41% of estimates in December 2021.
• Reduced the combined employee and contractor recordable injury frequency from 8.6 to 4.1 per million hours between 2021 and 2025.
• Reduced average unplanned minutes off supply per customer, excluding major event days, from 268 in 2021–22 to 221 in 2025–26.

Decisions in context

I became chief operating officer when the board decided that field crews, network control, vegetation management and emergency management should answer to one executive after the 2019–20 fires. Until then, vegetation sat with asset management and emergency planning with corporate services, and on the worst days the people making decisions met each other for the first time in the control room. My first year was spent putting those teams under a single fire-season operating plan and a single safety measure covering employees and contractors. Since then the work has been to make decisions in advance: a published rule for de-energising high-risk feeders on Catastrophic days, vegetation contracts paid by certified span, and restoration estimates signed by the field managers who must meet them. I present to the board's safety and network risk committee every quarter and to the full board on fire-season readiness each September. I am not a director of Wyndarra, and my part in the regulatory process is to supply the operating evidence behind our proposals to the AER.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; completing the expansion of the Catastrophic-day feeder list and the operating evidence for the 2029–34 regulatory proposal.

Mandate

Consolidate three regional control rooms into one and lead the field workforce through the fire and storm seasons.

Outcomes

• Merged three regional control rooms into one at Goulburn, with a backup room at Wagga Wagga, in 2019; reported switching errors fell from 23 a year to 7.
• Introduced fire-day protection settings on 312 feeders, disabling automatic reclosing on days rated Severe or above under the rating system then in use.
• Rebuilt about 2,100 poles and 380 km of line after the 2019–20 fires; 95% of fire-affected customers had supply or a generator within twelve days of access being granted.
• Commissioned the LiDAR vegetation survey whose findings led to the 2021 contract change.

Decisions in context

I came to Wyndarra from a power station, and the first lesson was that a network's assets are spread across thousands of square kilometres and inspected far less often than a station's. My mandate was to merge three regional control rooms, each with its own switching habits, into a single centre in Goulburn with a backup room in Wagga Wagga. The merger exposed differences in how operators wrote and checked switching instructions, and we standardised them with the people who used them, as I had once done at Bellcarrick. In the spring of 2019 we introduced fire-day protection settings across 312 feeders. Weeks later the fire season began, and for much of that summer my job was coordinating crews, generators and access with the fire agencies, then rebuilding about 2,100 poles. The season showed me how little of our fire risk protection settings alone could address, and the vegetation survey we began in 2020 set the agenda for my next role.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief operating officer when the role was widened to include vegetation and emergency management.

Mandate

Run Bellcarrick safely under its new owner, recommend its future to the board and, once closure was decided, lead the shutdown and the transition of its workforce.

Outcomes

• Closed all four units on 30 April 2018, the date announced in September 2015, after the board held it through the 2017 price rise.
• Of 412 employees, 141 were redeployed within Telmora, 102 retired, 131 were in other work within twelve months and 38 were still seeking work.
• No lost-time injury in the final 22 months of operation.
• Established the Bellcarrick Futures Trust with A$6m of company funding for retraining and local enterprise.

Decisions in context

Telmora bought Corrabin in January 2014 and kept me at Bellcarrick as general manager. Within a year it was clear that the station's boilers would need about A$180 million to run beyond 2018, and that the investment could not be justified. My task changed from running the station to recommending how it should end. I took three options to the board, recommended a single closure of all four units on a fixed date and spent the following thirty-one months making that date work: keeping enough skilled people to run ageing units safely, building a plan for every employee by name, agreeing redeployment rules with the unions and setting up a community trust. The hardest part was holding the date when prices rose in 2017. The part I would most like to redo is our treatment of resident contractors, who were left outside most of the commitments. I left once the station had closed and its rehabilitation had passed to a specialist team.

Reason for the move

The station had closed and its rehabilitation had passed to a specialist team; recruited by Wyndarra to run network operations.

Mandate

Restore the reliability of an ageing four-unit station after repeated boiler-tube failures, and prepare it for the state's sale of the business.

Outcomes

• Lifted equivalent availability from 79% to 87% through a four-year boiler-tube inspection and replacement programme.
• Reduced lost-time injuries from eleven a year to two.
• Introduced one permit-to-work system for employees and contractors across all four units.
• Led the station's contribution to the vendor due diligence for the 2013 sale.

Decisions in context

I returned to the station where I had started, as its manager, at a time when it was failing more often than it should. Boiler-tube leaks were forcing units off several times a year, each one costing days of generation, often when the market most needed it. We built an inspection programme around the tube sections with the worst history, changed overhaul scopes and accepted longer planned outages in order to reduce unplanned ones. Availability rose from 79% to 87% over four years. I also inherited an injury rate I found unacceptable, much of it among contractors during overhauls, and introduced a single permit-to-work system that applied to everyone on site. In 2012 the state announced that Corrabin would be sold, and the last eighteen months of the role were spent supporting due diligence while keeping the station's people informed about a process none of us controlled.

Reason for the move

Corrabin was sold to Telmora Energy; asked to stay on as general manager under the new owner.

Mandate

Move maintenance from fixed intervals to condition-based planning and shorten major overhauls at a 2,000-megawatt station.

Outcomes

• Cut average major overhaul duration from 58 days to 41.
• Introduced condition monitoring on boiler feed pumps, coal mills and generator transformers, reducing related forced outages by about 40%.
• Designed the generator's first contractor safety induction common to both stations.

Decisions in context

Mount Tenby was Corrabin's newer and larger station, with four 500-megawatt units, and its maintenance was still organised around intervals set when the units were commissioned. My job was to move towards maintenance based on inspection and condition, which meant persuading experienced tradespeople that a pump running well did not need to be opened on schedule, and that one with rising vibration did. We shortened major overhauls from 58 days to 41, mostly by fixing scope earlier and agreeing with overhaul contractors on fewer, larger and better-supervised crews. Those contractors were where our safety record was weakest, so I designed the company's first common contractor induction and the supervision rules that went with it. During these years I completed a part-time MBA, choosing contractor management for most of my assignments.

Reason for the move

Promoted to station manager at Bellcarrick Power Station.

Mandate

Complete the graduate programme, then take shift responsibility for the station's operation.

Outcomes

• Rewrote the station's switching and isolation procedures with operators after a near miss in 1996.
• Commissioned the first digital control system on Unit 3 as electrical engineer in 1997.
• Led a shift team through the station's first months of bidding and dispatch in the new wholesale market from December 1998.
• Trained 14 operators for control-room authorisation.

Decisions in context

I joined Bellcarrick as one of four graduate engineers in 1993 and rotated through electrical maintenance, the coal plant, the laboratory and the control room before settling in electrical engineering. The near miss of 1996, when a fitter almost opened a live cubicle that our paperwork showed as isolated, changed the direction of my career: I spent much of the next year rewriting switching procedures with the operators who would use them. In 1997 I commissioned a digital control system on Unit 3, and in 1998 I became a shift operations superintendent, responsible on shift for all four units and the switchyard. That December the station began bidding into the new wholesale market, and my shift team learnt to run units to five-minute dispatch instructions. Those years taught me to trust the people who operate plant over the people who design procedures for them.

Reason for the move

Promoted to engineering and maintenance manager at Mount Tenby Power Station.