Melissa St John

Creative, engaging, authentic, positive leader who adapts to change, engages, grows and empowers high performing teams. Highly motivated, dependable, patient, problem-solver with over sixteen years of experience in the Electrical Industry. Registered Professional Engineer and Chartered Professional Engineer. Quick learner with keen attention to detail and a thorough, organised approach to all tasks. Skilled in relationship building, negotiating and stakeholder engagement supported by an ability to communicate with people from all business levels. Good at prioritising, time management and ensuring company deadlines are met and key results achieved.

• Unassisted Pole Failure Analysis: Conducted detailed data analysis on unassisted pole failures to provide insight into why unassisted failure rates are above the minimum three year moving average reliability threshold of 99.99% per annum. Developed key understanding in pole serviceability assessment calculations for determining pole condition. Established data frameworks for analysis of pole population attributed in relation to failure modes to minimise manual handling of data. Communicated my findings through presentations and summary emails to the Executive General Manager and the Engineering Leadership Team. Found smaller poles (3kN and 5kN WS), Natural Round and CCA H3 treated poles in Western Areas to be the highest contributors to pole failure rates. Storms also played a role in poles that failed within two years of inspection. Improved tracking and knowledge of unassisted pole failures led to focused reporting metrics, replacement strategies, risk approaches and reduced pole failures in 2022/23.
• Asset Lifecycle Management: Consolidated existing asset lifecycle practices, drew together key stakeholder knowledge, identified asset life limiting factors and analysed corporate risk and asset data trends of Pole Top Structures. Documented improvement opportunities and identified best practices to meet business objectives for the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) submission.
• Fostered Engagement: In times of extensive change due to companywide systems replacements (DEBBs) and a global pandemic (COVID 19). I established ways to support and engage team members across multiple locations and working environments (including working from home). Some notable examples that impacted differing levels of the organisation include: Virtual morning teas, Virtual Christmas in July, Advent Calendar to showcase 2020 team success, Virtual Team Escape Rooms, learning/upskilling sessions, and fun chat environment for Engineering Data Solutions. Change Curve activities at team brief and R U OK day presentation on my own heartfelt emotional journey highlighting “It is OK not to be OK” for Grid Investment. Organising and helping facilitate Resilience training for multiple Engineering Division staff located in Rockhampton. This enabled me to create the foundation required to maintain a productive high performing, collaborative team who were engaged and resilient. It contributed to a 5% increase in Engagement Survey score for the Engineering Data Solutions team in 2021.

• Microsoft Office 365 Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Whiteboard)
• Proficient at touch typing (55+ words per minute)
• Ability to easily learn, improve upon and create subject matter specific analytics and reporting tools
• Skilled in the management of corporate asset works management systems, geospatial systems, mobility solutions and risk management systems (including CBRM, IPS, Ellipse (Assets and Logistics), JAMIT, Rosetta, SAP Governance Risk and Compliance, ServiceNow, SAP Fiori)
• Proven ability to analyse asset performance data to enable data driven Engineering decisions. This includes the abilities to create data visualisation, conduct data wrangling, summarise and succinctly present and communicate information to solve key problem statements.

• SKILLED leadership training, Energy Queensland
• Mentor for a Graduate Engineer
• Adult Resilience, Carers Queensland
• Enterprise Skills – Change Agility – Level 1,2 & 3, Energy Queensland
• Underground Power Cables System Principles, CPD International
• IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Summit
• Women in Leadership Workshop, Liquid Learning
• Network Risk Training - Introduction and Assessing, EQL
• Safety in Defence Awareness Training, EQL
• Mates in Energy – General and Connector Training, EQL
• Managing the Life Cycle of Power Transformers and Digital Asset Management, Transformer Innovation Centre
• CIGRE Transformer Workshop – Dealing with the Unforeseen
• Condition Monitoring and Partial Discharge Diagnostics of Switchgear and Transformers, CPD International
• Asset Management, Chifley Business School
• Practical Substation Design, CPD International
• High Voltage Installations AS 2067:2008
• Distribution Planning, Overhead line design, High Voltage Substation Equipment, Basic and Advanced Protection, QUT
• Various technical and professional development seminars and conferences.

RPEQ

CPEng