Alison Andrew is a rare creature for an engineer; she’s as interested in people as much as in building things.
Rare also that in a world where men still hold most of the top jobs she has got to chief executive position on her ability to get the best from people in her teams.
She’s now the head of Transpower Ltd, the government-owned enterprise that runs the electricity grid, although her training is in chemical and materials engineering – not the electrical and mechanical qualifications held by most of her male staff. She doesn’t talk about gender issues and doesn’t see gender as a factor inher career.
In an engineering world which is overwhelmingly male, she talks of skills and experiences, challenges and opportunities, and describes her management style as collaborative and participative.
“Engineers are programmed to think logically, but I have also learned over my management career that it is all about people. How you work with them to get the best out of people, build good people around you and how you empower and motivate to do fantastic things.”
Three months into her role, she says the challenge at Transpower is more about meeting customer needs and being smarter not bigger, rather than building a lot of new transmission lines.
“We have generation in the south and demand in the north, and therefore we need a grid to work well, not gold plated but flexible, and one that doesn’t fail and is not hugely expensive. It’s a good challenge to achieve all that.”
Sitting in a relaxed pose in her seventh floor corner office in Transpower, Alison Andrew exudes confidence. She speaks with an easy charm, a smile constantly and naturally flickering over her face.
“Lots of energy, always lots of things on, family oriented, fun to be with, always gets things done.” is her self-description.
She comes to Transpower after an impressive career heading divisions of big companies, some of them bigger than the organisation she now heads.
“I came back from the UK with an MBA and got a job at Petro corp, which Fletcher’s had just bought from the government. I was there at a fantastic time. Fletcher Challenge was New Zealand’s largest company. I worked in three divisions: energy, forestry, pulp and paper. I had an enormous number of challenges.
“I had a job on the road selling to customers. I did marketing and sales and business development. I did strategic studies. I did lots of work with consultants, with some great people … wonderful opportunities to learn good processes and systems.
“I worked as a manufacturing director in Fletcher Forests, built an engineering team at the manufacturing plant. Then I became the Finance Director for Fletcher Paper. That was a wonderful opportunity because it gave me exposure to all sorts of things I had never thought of doing. I learned a hell of a lot there.”
After Fletcher Paper was sold to Norkse Skog she joined fencepost.com which was the e-commerce business of Kiwi Dairies, later merged into Fonterra.
“Fonterra was a company where the politics were on steroids, but a really, really fantastic learning experience. It was the best of times, the worst of times. “At Fonterra I was running a $3-billion sales network globally for food ingredients, really challenging environments and big projects.”
Later she headed the New Zealand office of Orica Ltd, a company formed from the break-up of the British based international conglomerate ICI Ltd.
“Running Orica in New Zealand was a mini-CEO role. My boss was in Melbourne and as long as I delivered the numbers he left me to it.
“We won the award from Fonterra for supplier of the year, and the business of the year award within Orica Chemicals internationally. It was fun business and a great little company.
“Then I got promotion to global head of sales for Orica – the biggest supplier of things that go bang in the mining industry.”
So is coming to Transpower – a considerably smaller company – a step down?
“I have had some big roles, but this role has a lot of interesting challenges.”
The big spending days are over. Transpower, woefully behind with the state of its electricity grid five to eight years ago, has now largely caught up. Not all the big projects are over, but they have all been commissioned and are under way. That was the work of her high-profile predecessor, Patrick Strange.
Alison Andrew heads an organisation whose job she says is now about meeting customer demand, squeezing .out efficiencies, and “being smarter with what we do.”
Demand for electricity can be “peaky” when there are sharp but temporary increases. Assets need to be ‘sweated” to produce their maximum efficiency. People should be “empowered” and “enthused”, and coming from her, the language sounds natural, and to reflect genuine intentions and values.
“Transpower is really fascinating. Fantastic people, really capable people, smart people here. The electricityindustry is intellectually interesting. And I am quite a curious person. So there is a lot to do here.
Right now she is dealing with the regulator for the electricity industry, the Commerce Commission which has the power to set the prices Transpower charges generators and distribution companies to move electricity from power stations to homes, farms, factories and shops.
To do this the Commerce Commission approves a price path every four to five years. The price path factors in approved capital expenditure and demand, and allows a reasonable rate of return on assets to produce the prices Transpower is allowed to charge. Alison Andrew runs a monopoly under a lot of restraints.
She’s aware of the concerns in the industry and public about price rises brought about by increasing transmission charges.
Demand for electricity is uncertain. The Tiwai Point aluminium smelter may close; so might Norkse Skog’s pulp and paper plant at Kawerau. Will technologies like electric cars alter the demand for electricity? What services will large industrial companies want in ten, twenty, thirty year’s time? Hence the emphasis on efficiencies, finding better ways, being smarter.
“There are interesting developments in smart technology that can help us get much more efficient – things like sending robots down lines to investigate conductors.”
At home with a husband and two teenage boys life changes pace a little; “They are always there with their mates, playing, drinking, jumping into the swimming pool, raiding my fridge.”
She and her husband both like to cook, “I love healthy food, lots of salads. I have a Jewish cookbook, beautiful foods with wonderful flavours like slow cooked lamb, and we have 10-20 people over, nothing fancy. During the week, it’s whatever I have in the fridge that I can get onto
the table fast.”
And five to seven years on, “I will be ready to retire. I have come to a view that careers happen. Some happen because you are open to opportunities and you take opportunities when they come to you.”
Alison aspires to be a professional director, but right now the focus is Transpower.
“I feel very privileged to lead this organisation, it has a strong, deep and proud history of building an infrastructure asset to serve New Zealand.”