Latest news
Winter 2020
energysafe issue 58
Take 5 with
Marnie Williams
By Daniel Brace, Communications Advisor,
Communications and Marketing
We recently caught up with our newly appointed Director
of Energy Safety to see how she's settling into her role.
Marnie Williams recently started as
Director of Energy Safety and Chair
designate for the new Commission she
will be leading ESV into in January 2021.
She is also the first woman in the role.
Marnie has a long history in regulation,
most recently at WorkSafe.
To help break the ice, we’ve asked
Marnie five questions, so you can get
to know her a bit.
DB: You started at ESV in
the weeks when coronavirus
(COVID-19) restrictions were
introduced, and most your staff
were working from home. How have
you navigated through that hurdle?
MW: Yes, I managed to spend one
full day in the office and then on the
next morning we moved to working
from home arrangements. This meant
I was not able to meet most of the
ESV team in person.
It was very important for me to introduce
myself to our employees, so I hosted
an all employee Skype session in my
second week. I think we had 169 people
on the call! I used this as an opportunity
to speak a little bit about myself,
including my work experience, and
my vision for the business. I have and
will continue to run these all-employee
sessions just to ensure we remain
connected and informed.
I also spent a significant amount
of time (virtually) attending multiple
team meetings of all the different work
groups, where I was introduced to
every employee and also got to hear
what they all do on a day to day basis.
I have recently started to host informal
“brown-bag” lunches with small cross
sectional groups of the organisation
with the aim of getting to know people
in a less formal setting. As we are not
all sharing the same office, you miss
out on all the incidental opportunities
to connect with your team.
I am trying to fill some of those gaps,
but it has most certainly been
challenging to take up a new leadership
role in an organisation during a lockdown
period! Similarly, I have held many
meetings with industry participants
and stakeholders in the same way.
Establishing and maintaining strong
and trusting working relationships are
key to success and I think it will just
take longer in the current environment.
I am hopeful that I will get there.
DB: Could you tell us about an
achievement in your career that
you are especially proud of?
Having been a safety regulator for
most of my career, I am very proud
that I played a role in the introduction
of rollover protection (or roll bars) on
quad bikes.
Quad bike roll-overs are a leading
cause of death and serious injuries in
agriculture. I was part of the team that
changed the accepted policy position
on what reasonably practicable control
measures should be adopted for the use
of quad bikes in Victorian workplaces
where there is a risk of rollover. We were
the first jurisdiction to do so in Australia
and only the second in the world.
It has not been without its challenges,
in fact the matter was subject to a
Supreme Court case, but in the end the
results speak for themselves. Since the
changes were introduced the number of
fatalities has dropped significantly.
On a similar vein, about 15 years ago,
I was part of a WorkSafe team that
eliminated manual garbage collection
by local government workers across
Victoria. We all take the wheelie bin
system for granted now, but at the time
it was a big issue to change the work
practices of the industry. By largely
automating household rubbish collection,
we are able to almost eliminate the
incidence of musculoskeletal disorders
(such as back and shoulder injuries etc)
and significantly reduce fatalities where
garbage collection workers were being
struck by vehicles or falling off the back
of trucks.
DB: What is your future vision for
ESV and the industries we regulate?
MW: I would like to see ESV remain
relevant as the industry safety regulator.
To do that we need to have the capacity
to be ahead of new technology in the
sector and be ready for the regulatory
response from a policy perspective.
We need to enable the industry to
innovate and thrive, whilst protecting
the community from harm (such as from
fires, electrocution, explosions etc).
Data and Analytics are a foundational
platform for enabling ESV to be proactive
and prevention driven, with a focus on
mitigating safety risks before they
cause harm.
I want to see ESV strengthen its
regulatory practice through greater
use of its compliance and enforcement
powers. In doing so, we need to be
transparent, consistent and accountable
but also importantly, our focus needs to
be on the issues of strategic importance.
We need to improve the way in which
we engage with community and those
we regulate to build trust. We need to
be clear about how we measure our
success based on outcome measures
and not activity.
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