Thirty years from the station crib room to the contractor's executive

Mandate

Build the workforce for the largest transmission construction programme in the company's history, consolidate its enterprise agreements and bring psychosocial risk into the company's safety system.

Outcomes

• Grew the direct workforce from 2,700 to 4,900 while reducing labour hire from 31% to 18% of field hours.
• Hired 167 workers from a closing coal-fired station with start dates after closure; 152 remained a year later.
• Introduced paired visits and stand-down authority on contested routes; reported incidents on one section fell from 37 to 9 in consecutive six-month periods.
• Raised First Nations employment from 2.1% to 6.4% of the direct workforce, with 118 apprentices and trainees.
• Grew apprentices from 140 to 420, with 81% completing their apprenticeships in the 2025 cohort.

Decisions in context

Pennardine recruited me as it won the first of several large transmission contracts in New South Wales and Victoria. The company had grown through maintenance work and had five enterprise agreements, limited apprenticeship capacity and a safety system that did not address psychosocial hazards. My first two years went on supply: planning crews across the order book, building apprenticeship intakes and making labour hire a deliberate bridge rather than a habit. From 2023 the work broadened to transition hiring from a closing coal-fired station, First Nations employment measured beyond construction and, after a difficult period on a contested route in 2024, psychosocial controls for liaison officers and crews. I attend the People and Safety Committee, where I report psychosocial incidents beside physical injuries, and prepare papers for the Remuneration Committee on executive and field reward. I am not a director of Pennardine or its subsidiaries.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing the workforce plan for overlapping projects from 2027.

Mandate

Settle the offshore and plant enterprise agreements without disrupting LNG production, and reduce turnover among experienced offshore technicians.

Outcomes

• Negotiated the 2019 offshore agreement with a joint roster committee; approved by 84% of voting employees without industrial action.
• Reduced turnover among experienced offshore technicians from 11% to 6% over two years.
• Agreed pandemic roster changes for offshore crews through the committee in nine days in March 2020.
• Introduced a psychosocial risk assessment for offshore isolation and swing patterns, reported to the operator board's safety committee.

Decisions in context

As general manager of people for operations I led human resources for the offshore platforms and the onshore LNG plant, working for the chief operating officer. The 2019 offshore bargaining was the defining piece of work. I proposed that the company give up its right to extend swings by notice and govern roster changes through a joint committee advised by a fatigue scientist, accepting about A$4.1 million a year in relief crews. The agreement passed without industrial action. A year later the same committee allowed us to redesign offshore rosters for quarantine in nine days. I also introduced a psychosocial risk assessment covering isolation, swing length and the weeks after a crew returned home, and presented it to the operator board's safety committee. In 2021 my family needed us back in New South Wales, and the Pennardine role came at the right time.

Reason for the move

Returned to New South Wales for family reasons and was recruited by Pennardine as chief people officer.

Mandate

Bring offshore human resources practice into line with the operator's onshore standards and reduce attrition after the end of the construction phase.

Outcomes

• Reduced overall offshore turnover from 14% to 8% between 2014 and 2017.
• Introduced a fatigue review for every swing extension, with records shared with health and safety representatives.
• Built a progression framework for offshore technicians, with 64 promotions to senior technician by 2017.
• Supported crews through a 2016 cost-reduction programme that removed 92 offshore roles, most through redeployment and voluntary exits.

Decisions in context

I joined Tessaline as its offshore assets moved from construction into steady operation. The workforce was young, highly paid and mobile, and many technicians treated the platforms as a stage in a career rather than a place to stay. My work was practical: a progression framework that gave experienced technicians a reason to remain, consistent treatment of rosters and leave, and a fatigue review whenever the company used its right to extend a swing. Those reviews produced the evidence I later used in bargaining. The 2016 oil price fall forced a cost-reduction programme, and I led the people side of removing 92 offshore roles, mostly through redeployment to the plant and voluntary exits. The experience taught me how much offshore employees judged the company by its handling of rosters rather than by its pay rates.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead human resources for all operations.

Mandate

Renegotiate the station agreements, then lead the people side of the state's sale of the business.

Outcomes

• Concluded two rounds of station agreements, in 2009 and 2012, without lost time.
• Transferred 1,380 employees to the new owner in 2013 with service and entitlements recognised; 97% transferred.
• Introduced a fatigue management standard limiting consecutive outage shifts.
• Completed a part-time graduate certificate in work health and safety in 2012.

Decisions in context

I came back to Haverell to lead employee relations and, from 2010, its human resources function. The stations were ageing, the workforce was experienced and the question everyone asked was whether the state would sell. When it did, in 2013, my work for the year was the transfer of 1,380 employees: recognising their service and entitlements, carrying their agreement across and answering their questions honestly, including the ones I could not answer about the stations' future. Ninety-seven per cent transferred. Before the sale I introduced a fatigue standard that limited consecutive long shifts during outages, which had been on my mind since an apprentice's car crash in 1998. The new owner centralised its human resources function after the sale, and I stayed six months to complete the transition before leaving for Tessaline.

Reason for the move

After the sale the new owner centralised human resources; I moved to offshore LNG.

Mandate

Negotiate and administer project agreements for pipeline spreads and reduce lost time from disputes.

Outcomes

• Negotiated six project agreements, four of which ran to completion without lost time.
• Introduced a standard induction for liaison officers on landholder access and biosecurity.
• Cut average time to resolve site disputes from 19 days to 6.

Decisions in context

Brigstock built gas pipelines across farming and grazing country, and each project was a temporary workforce assembled for a year or two. I negotiated the project agreements that covered welders, operators, labourers and liaison staff, and spent much of my time on the right of way rather than in the office. The experience gave me a lasting respect for construction workforces and for the speed with which a site dispute can become a stoppage. It also showed me a hazard I did not then have words for: the treatment of young liaison officers by landholders who opposed a pipeline. I introduced an induction for access and biosecurity but did nothing about the hostility itself, a gap I closed nearly twenty years later at Pennardine. I left to lead employee relations at a permanent employer, at Haverell.

Reason for the move

Returned to Haverell to lead employee relations at a larger permanent employer.

Mandate

Complete the graduate programme, then advise station management on the site agreement, disputes and outage rostering.

Outcomes

• Prepared bargaining data for the 2000 and 2003 site agreements.
• Administered the dispute procedure for the larger station, resolving most matters at the first step.
• Proposed limits on consecutive outage overtime after an apprentice's car crash in 1998, adopted in part in 1999.

Decisions in context

Haverell's graduate programme put me in the station's human resources office with a site agreement, a roster and a strong union. I learnt bargaining by preparing tables and taking notes, and by sitting in crib rooms listening to why a clause mattered to the people it covered. In 1998 a second-year apprentice fell asleep driving home after a sixteen-hour outage shift and was badly hurt. The overtime had been approved and paid correctly; nobody had considered whether he should drive. I proposed limits on consecutive outage overtime, and management adopted part of the proposal the following year. Those six years gave me a grounding in shift work, outage planning and the culture of a power station. I left to learn bargaining in construction, where agreements were made for each project rather than renewed every few years.

Reason for the move

Moved to pipeline construction for experience of project bargaining.