What's your job about?
Western Power is WA’s network operator for the South West Interconnected Network. This network covers all the way down to Albany, as high as Kalbarri and as East as Kalgoorlie. As a graduate, we have many different areas of responsibility as we run on six month rotations throughout the business for three years. Currently, I am in the distribution design area of Western Power and this is where we design how a customer will connect to the network. The customers range from your average residential household to big mining sites – so there is always something different to design! We will receive a scope of work after the customer’s request has gone through an initial review. Once learning the job and the suburb it is supposed to be in, we sometimes will scope out the area of the requested works. From there we will come up with a design to carry out the requested job. The design needs to then have an approximated cost generated and when everything has been approved, it will go to the field crews to work their magic.
What's your background?
I was born and raised in WA and went to primary school and high school which led straight into university. In my last year of primary school, we were asked “What do you want to be when you grow up” – this question had stumped me and I didn’t know what to answer. One of my friends turned to me and said “You like science and drawing – why not try engineering?” and so my aspiration to become an engineer was born. My first ever job was working at KFC which I did for a few years before trying FIFO for three months as my first vacation program. In my second year of university, I was awarded a scholarship from Western Power and this really began my career in the power industry. I worked in two vacation programs at Western Power; one placement in Network Operations and another in Project Symphony. Both were great experiences and I was always doing something different and new. After moving on from the vacation student status, I’ve been a full-time graduate engineer for a few weeks now.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
People of all different backgrounds work all over Western Power. Depending on the team and the job role you don’t always need to have an engineering degree, at the end of the day it is really the experience you have under your belt that makes the difference. In design alone, you have a mix of people who have come from all different backgrounds such as trades or lawyers and aren’t all engineers.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I think the coolest thing about my job is really being able to make an impact on people’s lives, especially within the distribution design team. I design how a customer can connect to the grid and for example if that customer’s dream was to always open their own bakery, I can help to achieve that person’s dream. Power is something that everyone needs in their lives every day and to be able to work in a company where we keep those lights on, it’s cool to know that we are helping people from the little to the big things.
What are the limitations of your job?
I think really the only limitation is everything you’ll be working on relates to power which seems pretty straight forward but it is something to consider when coming to work here versus a consulting job where you may work with various different types of companies.
There are two sides to every coin.
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