HSE Graduate at Monadelphous Australia
As an HSE graduate at Monadelphous, I am currently supporting the Sustaining Capital team, which is one of the business units for our Maintenance & Industrial Services North West division. My area of responsibility involves assisting in incident investigations, preparing HSE deliverables for tendering, administrative support for our on-site safety advisors, undertaking site audits and inspections.
The tasks that I do each day can vary, but as I am typically office-based, I start the day by checking my emails to see if there is anything urgent that I will need to act. Once that is done, I log in to one of our safety programs which contain all safety incidents. I check to see if there are any outstanding events which require actioning and if so, I ensure the relevant managers or employees are aware of the event. By this time, I continue to work on the tasks that I had left from the day before; such responsibilities could include the creation of toolbox presentations, HSE alerts or administrative task. Throughout the day, there may be a meeting or two to attend; these can take some time out of my day. If I am on-site, a typical day is more diverse, and things change very quickly – which I love!
My childhood was spent growing up on Christmas Island, Australia. By the age of 12, my family decided to move to Perth because there were more opportunities for our long term, so coming from a small, close-knit island to a big, new city was quite overwhelming. I attended Girrawheen Senior High School and decided to get into university not only to make my parents proud but also to test my abilities. Choosing a career in Occupation Health & Safety wasn’t something I intended to do from a young age. I grew up looking after my two younger brothers while my dad worked a FIFO roster. I felt like these two life experiences influenced the direction which led me to choose my career path.
Prior to starting my graduate program, I worked full time in a contact centre. I believe that having OH&S knowledge together with my previous work experience made me a strong applicant for the graduate program combined with my customer service and administrative experience. I have been in my role for six months now and have learned and experienced a lot more while being in this program than the years I spent at university. It’s so different once you can put things into practice and work with an experienced team!
Communication skills, attention to detail, and being able to work autonomously and within a team environment would be essential skills that you would require, in my opinion. In terms of characteristics, I’d say having a friendly demeanour, being assertive and being able to show genuine concern towards people would be highly beneficial.
I love working with people and enjoy taking what I’ve learned in theory and putting it into practice. I love that I get to go to the site, as I enjoy going out in the field to see how our work crews are doing; I find it way better than being stuck in an office. Another thing I can point out about the role that I find to be the most rewarding; is knowing that we are keeping workers safe within the workplace and because of that, they get to go home in one piece; this makes me feel that what I am doing is all worthwhile.
The drawback about my job is not always having the knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, as this job revolves highly around systems and procedures. Another limitation to mention is not having enough experience in the working environment whether it would be mining, construction, oil & gas, civil, mechanical or electrical, but I know this will come with time.