My contribution to a board
A board that oversees a large operating workforce rarely sees the work itself. It sees ratios: utilisation, service levels met, cost per ticket, injury rates. I have spent nearly thirty years on the ground beneath those ratios, first as a field engineer, then on service desks in Sydney and Manila, in data-centre plant rooms and now as a chief operating officer. I can read an operating report and tell a board which numbers describe the work and which describe the reporting. That is the main thing I would bring.
I would also bring a working knowledge of three areas that many boards now find difficult. The first is technology and cyber risk in an outsourced world: who holds privileged access, from where, under what approval, and what the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act expects of responsible entities and their suppliers. The second is workforce safety in dispersed operations, where fatigue, driving and on-call work carry risks that a head-office injury rate can hide. Work health and safety laws give officers, including directors, a due-diligence duty, and I know what evidence a director should ask for to discharge it. The third is contract risk: how service credits, liability caps and transition timetables translate into the experience of customers and staff.
The ASX Corporate Governance Council's recommendations expect an audit committee made up of non-executive directors, most of them independent, with an independent chair, and they ask boards to explain how they oversee risk. I would serve as a member of an audit and risk committee and would be ready, after a year, to chair a risk or safety committee. I would not seek to chair an audit committee; my financial literacy is sound, but others bring deeper accounting expertise.
Judgement in practice
01A disclosure about a phishing incident made before we knew everything
When three Torvelle engineers' credentials were captured in February 2025, our first evidence suggested no client system had been reached, but we could not yet prove it. Some colleagues wanted to wait for the forensic report before telling clients. I recommended that we tell every affected client within hours what we knew, what we did not and when we would know more, and that we tell our chief executive and the Audit and Risk Committee chair the same day. The forensic review later confirmed no client access. Two clients told us afterwards that the early, incomplete notice was the reason they trusted the final one. On a board I would ask management for the same thing: the first account of an incident should be fast and labelled as provisional, not slow and polished.
02A maintenance contractor's safety record at a housing provider
In 2022 Kindlebrook's management proposed renewing its main maintenance contractor, which had the lowest price and good tenant satisfaction scores. As a member of the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee I asked for the contractor's injury and near-miss data and for the hours its tradespeople worked. The data showed a pattern of very long days and two falls from height in a year. I recommended a one-year renewal with safety conditions and a quarterly report, instead of the proposed five-year term. The board agreed, and the contractor improved enough to earn a longer term in 2023. The lesson I would take to any board is that a contractor's price and its people's working hours belong in the same paper.
03An incentive measure I asked to have removed from my own pay
Until 2025 field utilisation was one of the measures in my short-term incentive. When I proposed lowering the field utilisation rate after a serious vehicle crash, I recognised that the change would reduce my own pay and that keeping the measure would invite doubt about every future decision I made on field staffing. I asked the People, Safety and Remuneration Committee to replace it with a safety and service measure, and to do so before it approved the operating change. It did. As a director I would look carefully at whether executives' incentives reward the outcomes a board says it wants, and I would expect management to raise conflicts in their own pay without being asked.
My first year on a board
My first months would go on understanding where the work happens. I would ask to visit operating sites before my first full board cycle: a depot, a control room, a plant or a regional office, chosen by management and then one chosen by me. I would read two years of board and committee papers, the risk register and its movements, the most recent internal audit findings and every serious safety incident report, and I would ask the chief executive which question the board most often fails to ask.
I would expect to say little in early meetings. My aim for the year would be to learn which operating measures management relies on and which it reports to the board, and whether those are the same. Where they differ, I would ask why, privately first. I would meet the head of internal audit and the senior safety leader without management present, as good practice allows. At the end of the year I would ask the chair for direct feedback on whether my questions helped the board decide or only added to its reading.
Conflicts and their management
The conflicts I would have to manage are concrete, so I would deal with them in advance. Torvelle sells IT and field services to utilities, hospitals and government-owned corporations, which are the sectors I find most interesting as a director. I would not join the board of any current Torvelle client, any company that has tendered for Torvelle's services in the past three years, or any competitor, supplier or bidding partner of Torvelle. I would ask Torvelle's company secretary to check every proposed board against our client and pipeline lists before a first meeting.
If a company I served later went to market for services Torvelle provides, I would declare it immediately, take no part in the procurement, and stand down if Torvelle chose to bid and the procurement was material to the company. I would keep my Kindlebrook directorship, which has no commercial link to Torvelle, and I would hold no more than one listed or government-owned board while I remain an executive. Time is the remaining conflict, and I have deliberately offered twenty-five days rather than a larger number I could not honour.
My independence statement
I am employed full-time by Torvelle and hold Torvelle shares and performance rights under its executive plan. I would only consider a board where neither Torvelle nor I have a commercial, family or financial connection that could colour my judgement, and I would set out every relationship I have, including any past dealings between Torvelle and the company, before a board decided whether to proceed. How the ASX Corporate Governance Council's independence factors apply to me is for that board to assess from what I disclose, not for me to assert.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Torvelle Services Limited
Board of directors: operating performance, major bids, contract transitions and cyber incidents
July 2021–present
Presents the operating report at every board meeting and takes bid papers above A$50 million to the board; not a director of the company and holds no vote.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Torvelle Services Limited
Audit and Risk Committee: operational risk, service credits, privileged access and business continuity
March 2017–present
Presented on government delivery risk twice a year from 2017; since July 2021 attends every meeting as an invitee and presents the operational risk register.
Reported to a committee
Torvelle Services Limited
People, Safety and Remuneration Committee: field safety, fatigue, attrition and incentive measures
July 2021–present
Reports each quarter on safety and workforce measures; asked the committee in 2025 to remove utilisation from my own incentive measures.
Served as a director
Kindlebrook Community Housing Limited
Board of a not-for-profit community housing provider with about 1,900 homes in south-east Queensland
November 2019–present
Non-executive director, unpaid; one of nine directors overseeing tenancy services, maintenance contractors and a property development programme.
Member of a committee
Kindlebrook Community Housing Limited
Finance, Audit and Risk Committee
February 2020–present
Member of a four-person committee reviewing accounts, the risk register, maintenance-contractor performance and the provider's own technology and tenant-data risks.
Served as a director
Torvelle Philippines Inc.
Board of the wholly owned Philippine subsidiary
September 2021–present
Director in an executive capacity, approving the subsidiary's accounts, leases, banking arrangements and local employment policies.