Thirty-two years between the pouring deck and the boardroom

Mandate

Settle the stalled Ferrison bargaining, build a group workforce plan for an ageing trade workforce, and take responsibility for psychosocial risk and the company's response to the positive duty on sexual harassment.

Outcomes

• Settled the Ferrison agreement in July 2022 without a termination application; no time lost to industrial action since, and the 2025 agreement settled in seven weeks.
• Reduced harassment prevalence among women in field crews from 31% to 14% between the 2022 and 2025 confidential surveys, at about A$3.2m a year in alternative accommodation.
• Kept 74 of 118 grinding-media workers in the foundry as machinists when the line closed in 2024.
• Raised Ferrison apprentice completion from 52% to 83%; 41 apprentices started in 2026, nine of them women.
• Reduced sponsored overseas tradespeople from 96 to 58 as apprentices qualified.

Decisions in context

I became chief people officer in January 2021, when the Ferrison bargaining had been stalled for four months and the group's people function was still organised by division. My first eighteen months were dominated by that agreement: the protected action in 2022, the decision not to apply for termination and the classification structure that settled it. Since then the work has widened. I set up the group's response to the positive duty on sexual harassment and its psychosocial risk register, wrote the camp and reporting conditions for field crews, rebuilt the apprenticeship programme around four full-time mentors and argued for the machining investment that kept 74 grinding-media workers in the plant. I prepare the people and remuneration committee's papers, attend its meetings outside executive sessions and present psychosocial risk to the health, safety and environment committee. I am not a director of Quarrington or any of its subsidiaries.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; leading the workforce side of the foundry's move to electric heat treatment.

Mandate

Rebuild employee relations at Ferrison after a bitter 2016 bargaining round, and bring field service crews from three acquired businesses onto one safety and fatigue system.

Outcomes

• Set up a joint consultative committee of managers, union delegates and health and safety representatives at Ferrison that met monthly throughout the period.
• Brought field crews onto one fatigue standard that counted travel and capped the working day, including travel, at fourteen hours.
• Introduced monthly verification of critical controls for molten metal, suspended loads and isolation, reported to the board's safety committee.
• Reduced the division's total recordable injury frequency rate from 11.8 to 5.2.

Decisions in context

I returned to Ferrison in March 2016 to lead people and safety for the division that held the foundry and the field services business. The foundry's 2016 agreement had just been made after a bitter round, and relations between management and the delegates were poor. I set up a joint consultative committee that met monthly whatever else was happening, and used it to take change proposals to the floor before they were final rather than after. In field services I brought crews from three acquired businesses onto one safety system and one fatigue standard that counted travel time, which some clients resisted because it limited shutdown shifts. I also introduced monthly verification of critical controls for molten metal, suspended loads and isolation, with results reported to the board's health, safety and environment committee. The division's recordable injury rate fell by more than half. When the group HR director retired at the end of 2020, the managing director asked me to lead people across the group.

Reason for the move

Appointed group chief people officer by the managing director when the group HR director retired.

Mandate

Create the cooperative's first combined people and safety function, renegotiate the plant agreements and manage the seasonal peak workforce.

Outcomes

• Negotiated five enterprise agreements in six years without industrial action.
• Ended two labour-hire contracts after a 2012 audit found underpayment of temporary migrant workers, and employed 210 seasonal workers directly at about A$1.8m a year.
• Moved 96 of 140 employees to other plants with relocation support when a 1950s cheese plant closed in 2014.
• Reduced the lost-time injury frequency rate from 9.4 to 2.8, mainly in manual handling and ammonia refrigeration.

Decisions in context

Marrowby was my move from safety into the wider people function. The cooperative's board, mostly dairy farmers, wanted one executive to answer for its people and its injury record, and I learnt enterprise bargaining, reward and workforce planning on the job while studying part time for a master's degree. The spring milk peak brought about 300 seasonal workers into five plants every year, many of them temporary migrants supplied through labour-hire companies. In 2012 an audit we commissioned found that two providers were underpaying them. We ended both contracts and employed 210 seasonal workers directly, which cost about A$1.8 million a year and was approved by the farmer-directors in one meeting. In 2014 we closed a cheese plant built in the 1950s and moved 96 of its 140 employees to other sites. I negotiated five agreements without industrial action, mostly by taking change proposals to delegates while they could still alter them.

Reason for the move

Returned to Ferrison to lead people and safety for Quarrington's wear parts and field services division.

Mandate

Bring the safety systems of a contractor growing quickly through the resources boom onto one standard across its client sites.

Outcomes

• Reduced the lost-time injury frequency rate across client sites from 5.8 to 1.7.
• Rewrote shutdown fatigue rules to count travel and cap the working day, including travel, at fourteen hours.
• Trained a peer-support network of sixty colleagues for fly-in, fly-out crews after two suicides in the workforce in 2008.
• Introduced a review of room standards and rest arrangements with each host before accepting shutdown work.

Decisions in context

Westerby was a maintenance and shutdown contractor growing fast in the resources boom, with crews on about thirty client sites in the Pilbara and the Goldfields. I joined to put one safety system across them. The hardest hazards were not on the tools. Our people worked twelve-hour shifts, travelled long distances, slept in camps run by clients and spent weeks away from their families. I rewrote the fatigue rules for shutdowns to count travel time and to limit the working day, including travel, to fourteen hours. In 2008 we lost two colleagues to suicide within four months. Neither death occurred at work; both had been shaped by it. We trained sixty colleagues as peer supporters and changed how supervisors were taught to notice withdrawal. I also began asking hosts about room standards and rest before we accepted shutdown work, though I did not then ask about harassment, a gap I have thought about often since.

Reason for the move

Moved to Marrowby Foods to add employment relations and the wider people function to safety.

Mandate

Build the plant's first complete safety system after the 1999 metal splash, covering molten metal, crane lifts, respirable silica and noise.

Outcomes

• Reduced the lost-time injury frequency rate from 14.2 to 3.6.
• Introduced verified pre-pour checks on ladle drying and refractory repairs, signed by the shift lead and audited weekly.
• Cut respirable silica exposures in the fettling shop through extraction, wet methods and air-fed helmets, confirmed by monitoring.
• Established elected health and safety representatives in every section and a joint safety committee.

Decisions in context

After the August 1999 splash, the general manager asked me to build the foundry's safety system, and I took the role in March 2000. The plant had rules but few controls that anyone verified. We started with molten metal: ladle drying, refractory repairs and pre-pour checks, each signed by the shift lead and audited weekly. We then worked through crane lifts, isolation, noise and respirable silica in the fettling shop, where my father worked. I persuaded the owners to fund extraction and air-fed helmets after monitoring showed exposures we could not defend. I set up elected health and safety representatives in every section and a joint committee, which gave the workforce a formal voice in safety for the first time. The plant's lost-time injury frequency rate fell from 14.2 to 3.6 over five years. I studied for a graduate diploma in occupational health and safety in the evenings, and left to see how safety worked for crews who moved between sites.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Westerby Mining Services to lead safety for a fly-in, fly-out contractor.

Mandate

Improve casting quality on mill liners, then run a melt shop shift.

Outcomes

• Reduced rejections of chrome-moly mill liners from 7.8% to 4.1% by changing heat-treatment cycles.
• Ran a melt shop shift of 38 people from 1997.
• Contributed to the investigation after an apprentice was burned on my shift in August 1999, which rebuilt the plant's pre-pour checks.

Decisions in context

I joined the foundry where my father worked as a graduate metallurgist in February 1994, a few weeks after finishing my degree. My first three years were in the laboratory and the heat-treatment shop, working out why chrome-moly mill liners cracked in customers' mills. Changing the heat-treatment cycles brought rejections down from 7.8% to 4.1%. In 1997 I became a melt shop shift superintendent, responsible for thirty-eight people melting, pouring and moving steel. I learnt to run a shift: whom to trust with a crane, how to tell when a crew was tired and how much depended on checks nobody recorded. In August 1999 a ladle with an undried refractory repair threw metal across the pouring deck, and a nineteen-year-old apprentice on my shift was burned. The investigation showed that I had walked past the same unverified check for two years. When the general manager asked me to lead the fix, I accepted.

Reason for the move

Asked by the general manager to become the plant's first full-time health and safety manager.