Career break to renovate a 127 year old limestone cottage

Three Chillies Design is WA's premier recreation and trail construction business. As a Business Manager at Three Chillies Design for over 2.5 years, I have enabled the company to triple turnover and sustain the growth for over 2 years, cementing its reputation as WA’s premier trail builder. My key deliverables include:• Transforming the end to end business and operational management of the business within three months, from a time-consuming paper based beast, to streamlined, online and responsive. • Identifying opportunities for business improvement, gain endorsement, and deliver effective and swift results through effective change management.• Managing hundreds of tender / quote submissions - costing, writing and submitting successful and compelling documents with diverse deliverables. • Overseeing all client facing elements of our design and construction processes including product selection, materiality and requirements and assuring completion on time and budget. • Cultivating and maintaining strong relationships with customers, helping them achieve better outcomes for their budget, exceeding expectations and delivering a positive customer experience.• Utilising creative problem-solving skills to overcome technical, logistical, spatial and risk constraints.• Agile leadership of a small support team to assure business continuity. Identifying strengths and talent, I cross-train and provide opportunities for growth, and foster a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.• Accountable for customer relationships, business development, tender submissions, program and project management (design and construction), and generic business management processes such as strategy, planning, HR, safety, compliance, operational and business systems, procurement, payroll, etc.

BHP WAIO and NickelWest initiated a preliminary Off Contract Engagement Tool (OCET) in 2019 to manage smaller suppliers undertaking high risk activities on site, and not subject to normal contractual obligations. I was employed as by BHP via Cobalt as a Change Project Manager, and moved into the PMO to help develop and drive the project. • Developed the processes and tools for the rollout, liaising across the business to make fit for purpose.• Piloted the system and improved for implementation into all sites across the State.• Change Project Manager across two operational mine sites, I piloted and implemented the new OCET tool, embedding the new process with managers, superintendents and supervisors. • Participated in the Steering Committee for the overarching global BHP Contractor Management Framework Project, to advise on global implementation of the OCET tool.

I successfully project & change managed the relocation of 200 staff and civic functions (library, customer service, etc) into a much smaller temporary office, with reduced privacy and amenity, paperless systems and new technology platforms and devices.Part of the role was to successfully drive consensus on the final internal layout of the new Walyalup Koort Civic Centre, across multiple influential internal and external parties, all with different expectations and requirements. Liaising with consulting Architectual firms, internal project and change teams, Directors, the CEO & Mayor, managers and staff was challenging, however the result was an excellent design outcome, that suited the both the limitations of the building and the end requirements of users. My diligence and persistence was a key factor in enabling the delivery of a beautiful and agile civic workspace and world class community hub.My strength as a collaborator and facilitator, and my ability to brainstorm, influence and negotiate multiple, complex issues, ensured continued strong support for the project across the business. My perseverance, resilience and ability to focus discussions on strategic objectives were noted as key success factors in this role.I also lobbied for, and successfully delivered, a refurbished fitout of all outcentres. This was undertaken at minimal cost, and with near new furniture that was surplus to needs in the new civic building. This was a win for sustainability, budgets and staff morale.

Driving an achievement culture, I led an operationally focused business services support team that was accountable for the implementation of Procurement (Purchasing, Logistics, Accounts Payable) as well as Payroll, Fleet, and Building Management. I reactivated and led the Procurement Business Improvement Program. There was significant concern the Procurement BIP had achieved less than half of its $1.5M pa objective. I was to find new opportunities, and establish benefits, targets and reporting mechanisms. • I critically analysed expenditure data to identify potential savings and then facilitated discussions across the business to test, risk assess and prioritise opportunities to determine priorities and recommendations, ensuring that operational integrity was enabled, not compromised.• The suite of recommendations, securing a potential savings of $1.8M per annum (an additional $1M than needed) were endorsed by the Management Team. The identified savings exceeded expectations, assuring the Alliance could achieve its overall Business Improvement goals. My excellent interpersonal skills, coupled with my understanding of operations and systems, an ability to analyse data, and facilitate agreed outcomes, enabled the success.

Change management for a portfolio of business change projects across the organization. This included:• An enterprise-wide SAP Work/Time Management tool, achieving strong advocacy in the Business Reference Group (25 leaders) and their teams, despite being rolled out on a redundant version of the technology.• Change Managing the transition to a new SAP e-Procurement platform, developing strategies, measures, stakeholder engagement and end user testing to assure smooth implementation to 500 internal users and 2000 external suppliers. The project was delivered on-time and budget, with 75% of users confident in the new system within one week of go live. • Developing a Management Operating System for Contracts Branch. This included improving metrics and customer relations, streamline processes and demonstrating value. Within a year, their customer satisfaction rating went from 60% to 90%, and employee satisfaction and productivity soared.

Tasked with the challenge of finding a sustainable reduction of operational expenditure of 5%, I pulled together a cross functional team, consisting of Executive, Managers, Frontline and Process Leads, to advise, review and confirm project scopes, predict likely savings and meet the 5% savings, without having a detrimental impact on operational effectiveness. I then developed a business case, with 5% ($6.5M) of savings for endorsement by the Lead Team and successfully managed the program, with individual projects championed by leaders from across the Regions and Processes.The ongoing benefits from this program of work yielded a sustainable change of more than 10% in operational expenditure.

Working with General Managers, Regional Managers and their teams, I developed strategic and tactical business plans considering risks, benefits, current corporate drivers and business imperatives. I scoped business improvement projects, reviewed complex datasets and developed business cases and measures of success for each opportunity, and implemented these projects in partnership with stakeholders in the business, as well as reporting and enabling their success to achieve business goals.

I transformed a regional Business Support function to be a high performing, customer focused team. • Performance Agreements rewritten for all employees, with customer focused metrics. This enabled improved customer focus and operational performance, and resulted in a significant boost to productivity and motivation. • I resourced and led two business improvement pilots – “Reduce procurement risk” and “Improve safety leadership”. Both were successful and rolled out to other regions subsequently.

I facilitated the successful implementation of Drinking Water Quality processes in Regions, collaborating widely to resolve complex issues and facilitate compliance, whilst also seeking and implementing opportunities for improvement to minimise incidents and compliance breaches.

I led a team in the collection, analysis, validation and reconstruction of complex asset and environmental data, meeting Service Level Agreement requirements and assuring maintenance of technical assets, and continuity of data collection.

• I developed trusted and highly collaborative relationships with key stakeholders including regulatory agencies, process managers and First Nations people.• I delivered a greenfield Environmental Management System into the Region, and developed compliance report templates and procedures, which were rolled out across the organisation. I mentored others in implementing their EMS, driving a step change in the way operational staff considered environmental issues. This was all undertaken in an era when environmental compliance was shunned.• I monitored and reported the Regions environmental compliance requirements, facilitated resolution of complex and sensitive environmental issues.