Laurence Ledrut (Process Safety Manager – Integrated Gas, Origin Energy) is one of our Process Safety Working Group’s most treasured assets.
She is a tireless proponent for Process Safety on behalf of everyone in our industry.
She has delivered our Process Safety Awareness campaigns to Origin Energy workers in roles that typically wouldn’t consider process safety in their day-to-day activities, providing them with a fresh and enlightened perspective on the unseen presence of process safety fundamentals in our work and everyday lives.
We feel very lucky to have her working closely with us as she flys the flag for Safer Together.
We took the time to ask her a few questions about herself and this Award.
Describe the Project for which you won your ‘Best & Fairest’ Award, and your feelings about being recognised for your efforts?
I believe that I was nominated for the “Best & Fairest” award based on my active contributions and subject matter expertise to the Process Safety Working Group, and for my presentation at the Process Safety Incident Review Panel.
I presented the learnings from a Tier 2 loss of containment of natural gas incident with high potential consequence, for which I was the investigation team lead - this loss of containment event happened in May ‘22, and I completed an in-depth investigation pushing through a short time frame to be able to share the findings openly (and as early as possible) with the Safer Together members.
I was pleased by the response and interest, and to see that member companies were taking actions to review their facilities to prevent a similar incident.
I am very excited to see that we, as an industry, have moved into a position where we are proactively sharing and creating an open-minded learning culture to help prevent future process safety incidents.
In your sphere, what Safer Together product or program do you think contributes the most improving to safety outcomes in our industry, and why?
The Process Safety working group has developed a number of incredible tools to raise awareness and help people connect with Process Safety; including a Process Safety awareness animation “We All Have a Part to Play”, which was nominated for the IChemE Global Awards in 2021 and won the Highly Commended Recognition.
For me, the most powerful outcome of the Process Safety Working Group are the organic connections, the opportunities for sharing the learnings and good practice among operators and contractors, and supporting each other throughout this journey to improve process safety.
On a personal note, if you could live anywhere for a year, where would you live, and why?
I already live in paradise as we relocated from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast in 2020 to be closer to our hinterland acreage; but on a more personal note, family is very important to me, and I would love to live closer to my parents, sisters and nephews in the Southwest of France.
Do you have anything else you would like to add or say?
Safer Together has reviewed its Strategic Safety Plan to identify future focus areas and there is no doubt that the needs of our industry are evolving, with an increased focus on reducing carbon emissions and developing less carbon intensive sources of energy to reach net zero.
However, the fundamentals still remain!
We still need to produce gas safely throughout the transition to ensure consistent supply whilst exploring new technologies. Whatever the future brings, let’s remember the good practices and lessons learnt, and keep collaborating.
We are Safer Together.