As a senior member of our U.S. market sector leadership team for WSP’s Earth and Environment (E&E) business, I am responsible for achieving the targeted revenue goals of our oil and gas (O&G) clients.
Over my career, I have been included in O&G client-initiated programs, such as global contractor safety council and remediation process improvement teams, and have received a safety and quality recognition award. As a leader of client-specific benchmarking efforts, my teams have been able to demonstrate industry best practices to many clients and create impactful achievements across the industry.
A big part of this effort is ensuring that we have an effective and well-supported team of client care leads in place for our key O&G accounts. We work closely to monitor performance, develop and plan strategies, build and coordinate technical teams across business lines, support major pursuits, and negotiate contracts and pricing.
Another crucial aspect of this group is developing strong relationships with our internal regional and district leadership, which ensure alignment with WSP’s broader goals. I encourage a focus on our safety culture, inspire the sharing of safety experiences, support WSP safety programs and ensure our teams understand each clients’ individual safety requirements.
Understanding Client Needs
Trained as an environmental hydrogeologist, a majority of my career has been spent supporting the ever-changing and demanding O&G industry.
The first five years were focused as a regulator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2; the following 25 years I’ve spent in the consulting industry, leading and supporting O&G downstream/midstream/upstream site investigation and remediation efforts. I progressed from individual site management to multi-site management, then moved to multi-state portfolios, country-wide focused portfolios, and finally to our clients’ global remediation and liability management program efforts.
Although technologies used across these portfolios and programs are similar, guiding our clients’ remediation and safety efforts in different and varying regulatory and cultural environments has offered an exciting career path that has enabled a combination of technical, contractual and client philosophical growth that I find beneficial to understanding our clients’ overall needs.
My responsibilities also include acting as a client account manager for one of WSP’s global diamond clients, experiencing the same daily challenges as my fellow client care leads. This client program extends throughout North America, encompasses several business lines, and is focused on technical issues such as geotechnical engineering, geohazard support, pipeline design and engineering, environmental remediation and environmental planning and permitting.
Focusing on Safety
Safety at WSP aligns with our clients’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts. We lead by example through continual focus on the care and safety of our own employees, our clients’ employees, and the public.
Our experience tells us that safety is not only a key value of WSP but a key metric within our clients’ ESG and sustainability parameters, and in their expectations in working with technically sound consultants.
A focus on safety is part of WSP’s holistic business practices and operational excellence that ensure our teams are well trained and exceed our clients’ expectations safety performance as well as around the reduction of environmental compliance issues.
We do everything we can to ensure that our teams, peers, stakeholders and the public are safe throughout their day; and their operations achieve the intended and required overall compliance.
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