Most of what decides whether energy workers join, stay and come home unharmed is fixed in a start date, a roster rule or a site arrangement, so I settle those before anyone sets a hiring number.
I am chief people officer of Pennardine Limited, an ASX-listed contractor that builds and maintains high-voltage transmission lines and substations for network owners in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Our head office is in Newcastle. When I joined in July 2021 we employed 2,700 people; at June 2026 we employed 4,900, most of them powerline workers, riggers, substation electricians and apprentices working on new lines through farming country. I am responsible for workforce planning, recruitment, enterprise agreements, apprenticeships, psychosocial safety and reward, covering A$655 million of annual employee costs. I report to our managing director, Lachlan Ormsby, and attend the board's People and Safety Committee.
I began in 1997 as a graduate industrial relations officer at Haverell Generation, a state-owned coal generator in the Hunter, and spent most of the next sixteen years there, interrupted by four and a half years negotiating project agreements for Brigstock Pipelines, a gas pipeline builder. After the state sold Haverell's stations in 2013, I moved to Perth and spent seven years with Tessaline Energy, an LNG operator whose offshore crews worked fortnight-on, fortnight-off rosters. Each of those employers taught me something the next one turned out to need.
The questions I work on now are practical ones. How does a company that must almost double its field workforce in five years hire people already trained in energy without costing them their redundancy entitlements? What does an employer owe the staff who knock on the gates of landholders who do not want a transmission line? Who should be allowed to change a roster? And what does First Nations employment on a construction project amount to once construction ends? My answers have cost schedule time, money and at least one client's patience.
Station workers hired after their last shift, not before it
Between 2024 and 2025 we hired 167 people from a closing coal-fired station and set every start date after the closure, so that nobody forfeited a redundancy payment. Covering the wait with labour hire cost A$6.8 million; 152 of the 167 were still with us a year later.
Two people at every contested farm gate
After 37 reported incidents of abuse or intimidation on one contested line route in six months, we ended single-person property visits and gave liaison officers authority to stand crews down. The section finished seven weeks late, and reported incidents fell to nine over the following six months.
An offshore roster changed only by agreement
At Tessaline I proposed that a joint committee, not management alone, should control offshore roster changes under the 2019 agreement. Extra relief crews cost A$4.1 million a year. Eighty-four per cent of offshore employees voted for the agreement, and pandemic rosters were settled in nine days.
Trades that outlast the line
First Nations employees make up 6.4% of our direct workforce, compared with 2.1% in 2021. Of them, 118 hold apprenticeships or traineeships in trades our maintenance contracts will need after each line is energised, rather than roles that end with construction.
Current focus
I am preparing our workforce plan for 2027 and 2028, when three projects we are bidding for could start in the same region as two already under way and compete for the same riggers and linesworkers. I am working with clients on the order of start dates rather than assuming we can outbid ourselves. I am also changing our psychosocial risk register so that it records hazards created by a client's decisions, such as access notices, alongside those we create.
Conversations I welcome
I am not seeking another executive appointment. I would consider one non-executive role outside electricity networks and construction, ideally on a people and remuneration committee or a safety committee, subject to our board's consent and a conflict review. I accept a few advisory and speaking invitations a year on energy workforce transition and psychosocial safety in field work.
