My contribution to a board
A board that oversees a large field workforce sees safety statistics in detail and the workforce plan in summary. What I would add is the ability to read the second as carefully as the first. I have spent thirty years in energy employment, at a coal generator, a pipeline builder, an offshore LNG operator and a transmission contractor, and most of the decisions that shaped those workforces were made in rosters, start dates, agreement clauses and access arrangements. I know where those decisions sit in a management paper and which assumptions in a workforce plan carry the business case.
I would bring three specific capabilities. The first is enterprise bargaining, which I have conducted in four different settings, including a negotiation in which I recommended giving up a management right that the operating team valued. The second is psychosocial risk in field work, where I can help a board ask whether controls change the work or merely support the people absorbing it. The third is workforce transition: hiring from a closing employer, recognising skills honestly and setting start dates so that people do not lose their entitlements.
I would not present myself as a financial expert for an audit committee, and I am not an engineer. My natural committee is people and remuneration, where I would serve a full annual cycle before chairing. I could also contribute to a safety committee, provided the board understood that my strength lies in organisational and psychosocial hazards rather than process safety engineering.
My first year on a board
I would spend my first three months reading before I spoke much. I would ask for the last three years of committee papers, the current enterprise agreements and the dates they are due for renegotiation, the psychosocial risk register and the incident reports behind it, and a sample of exit interviews from the field workforce. I would want to see one roster and one access or site arrangement as the people working under them experience them, which usually means a site visit without a presentation.
I would meet the committee chair, the chief executive, the head of people and the head of safety separately, and I would ask each of them the same question: which workforce assumption in the current strategy would hurt most if it proved wrong? Their different answers usually show where the board needs to look.
Through the rest of the year I would take part in a full committee cycle, from setting goals to year-end decisions and disclosure, and I would hold back from proposing changes until I had seen it once, unless I found a safety or bargaining risk that could not wait. At the end of the year I would ask the chair whether my questions had helped or had narrowed the discussion towards energy examples that did not fit the business.
Conflicts and their management
My executive role at Pennardine comes first, and any appointment would require the consent of our board and a review by our company secretary. That rules out a good deal. I would not join the board of a network owner, a generator or renewable developer that is or might become a Pennardine client, another transmission or electrical contractor, or a labour-hire business that supplies field workers to our industry. I would also decline a seat at any organisation in a commercial dispute with Pennardine.
I would disclose my shareholding in Pennardine and my directorship of Hallowfield Group Training, which hosts apprentices with Pennardine and receives payments for doing so. If a board I joined considered any matter touching the group training sector, I would declare the interest and leave the discussion.
During bargaining I would be careful about information. I know Pennardine's agreement terms, wage rates and bargaining strategy, and none of that would come into another boardroom, even where it seemed directly relevant to the discussion. If recusals became frequent, I would resign rather than hold a seat in which I could not take part. The twenty-five days I can offer would be agreed with our board before I accepted and would include preparation, committee work and time for the unexpected.
My independence statement
I am a serving executive of a listed contractor, and my first loyalty is to that role. Before accepting any appointment I would disclose my employment, my shareholding in Pennardine, my directorship of a group training organisation that hosts apprentices with Pennardine, and any commercial relationship between Pennardine and the company concerned. Whether I am independent would be for that board to judge against the factors in the ASX Corporate Governance Council's recommendations or the government owner's requirements, and I would not describe myself as independent before it had done so.
Judgement in practice
01Recommending that management give up a right it valued
In the 2019 offshore bargaining at Tessaline, the easier recommendation was to keep the company's right to extend swings and pay more for it. I recommended the opposite, knowing that the chief operating officer would oppose it and that the cost would be about A$4.1 million a year. I put his objections in my paper in full and presented the exit-interview and fatigue evidence beside them. The chief executive supported the proposal, the agreement passed without industrial action and the committee it created proved its worth in 2020. As a director I would expect management to bring the board recommendations that cost something, with the objections attached, and I would try to make that safe for the executive who does it.
02Asking a board to accept a cost it could have avoided
When we hired from a closing coal-fired station, I asked Pennardine's board to approve A$6.8 million of labour hire so that station employees could start after their redundancy rather than before it. One director asked whether we were paying for something the workers' previous employer owed them. I argued that we were the party that wanted their experience and should bear the cost of waiting for it. The board approved the bridge and asked for retention at twelve months to be reported. It was 91%. On a board I would ask management who bears the cost of a workforce decision and whether that is the party that benefits.
03Declining a pay increase for a chief executive in a lean year
As chair of the people committee at Hallowfield Group Training, I recommended in 2024 that the chief executive's pay be held flat although a benchmark supported an increase. The organisation had just reduced its support allowance for apprentices because a funding stream had ended, and I thought the two decisions would be read together by staff and apprentices. The committee instead approved a deferred adjustment conditional on the funding being restored, which it was in 2025. As a non-executive I try to ask who will read a pay decision and what it tells them, as well as whether it can be justified.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | People and remuneration committee, once I have served a complete year on it · People committee of a not-for-profit board (current) |
|---|
| Ready to join | People and remuneration committee · Health, safety and environment committee · Nomination committee |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Hallowfield Group Training
Board of directors; chair of the people committee from 2024; member of the finance, audit and risk committee
March 2022–present
Director of a not-for-profit Hunter group training organisation that employs about 380 apprentices and places them with host employers; chairs the committee that sets the chief executive's pay and reviews apprentice welfare.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Pennardine Limited
People and Safety Committee
July 2021–present
Attends every meeting; presents workforce plans, enterprise bargaining strategy and psychosocial incident reporting beside physical injuries.
Reported to a committee
Pennardine Limited
Remuneration Committee
July 2021–present
Prepares papers on executive reward, field incentive design and pay equity; attends apart from discussions of her own pay.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Pennardine Limited
Full board
2023–2025
Presented the station transition hiring proposal and the cost of the labour-hire bridge, and the controls adopted on a contested line route.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Tessaline Energy
Operator board safety committee
2018–2021
Presented the offshore psychosocial risk assessment, the roster committee's fatigue reports and the 2020 pandemic roster changes.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 25 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Water and wastewater utilities · Ports, rail and freight operators with large field workforces · Vocational training and apprenticeship providers
- Company type
- ASX-listed mid-cap company or government-owned corporation with an established people or remuneration committee
- Company stage
- An organisation growing or reshaping a regional field workforce, where bargaining, psychosocial safety and workforce supply need board attention together
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one non-executive seat on the board of an ASX-listed mid-cap company or a government-owned corporation with a regional field workforce of several thousand people, outside electricity networks and construction. Water utilities, ports, rail and freight operators, and vocational training providers are the settings where my experience of bargaining, psychosocial safety and workforce supply would transfer most directly without conflict. I would like to join the people and remuneration committee and, after a full cycle, chair it if the board wished. I would also serve on a health and safety committee. I would decline a seat offered mainly for my energy background or for diversity of title, and I would want to understand the chair's view of what the board lacks, the state of the organisation's enterprise agreements and its recent safety record before taking a conversation further.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
Not yet registered, and not relevant to me: the IICA Independent Directors' Databank serves appointments to Indian companies, while every seat I would consider is with an Australian listed company or a state-owned corporation. An Australian board would assess my independence against its own governance framework.
- A company directors' course with a written assessment, completed in 2023
- Not-for-profit board service since 2022, including people committee chair from 2024
- Annual briefings from Pennardine's remuneration adviser on proxy-adviser policy and disclosure
- Officer and director briefings on work health and safety duties and psychosocial hazards, 2023 and 2025