Meet Kaitlin video transcript

[Kaitlin, Safety Officer]: I do support all the operators out in the field, make sure that their job runs smoothly.

There's no incidents. Just being that point of call.

I'm Kaitlin. I'm the safety officer for the South West region.

I started at Water Corporation, beginning of June in 2019. I'm based out of the Bunbury regional office.

A typical day for me, so we generally start at 6 o'clock in the morning. I'll go out to the depot. Every morning, we start our day with a DRM (daily review meeting).

So each team would have one. They'll go in and explain what their plans are for the day, what work's involved, if they need any additional support.

One of the most common jobs that I'd go out to do is witness a 'derag'. Quite a lot of people flush unflushable items into the sewer system. Sewer teams will actually have to pull those pumps out of the station and pull those - what we call a rag out of the pumps, then improve its functionality again.

If I go witness a derag, first of all, I generally check if the site is secure. I would make sure that the teams are wearing the correct PPE. So making sure that they actually have a functional site to work around.

The biggest rewarding part about my job is going out, seeing the operators at the depots. While I'm also at site visiting crew, I'll probably do a bit of an inspection around the site to make sure that all the tags and inspections are up to date. Sort of our role is to make sure that everything's in line with our standards.

I've built quite good relationships with the teams out there. Most of our conversations are probably fishing related. Between me and my work mates, they'd probably admit that I probably catch the biggest fish out of all of them. It's always a bit of competition between everyone, but when we do have those conversations at the depot, it's good to see that they actually do get outside of work and enjoy life as much as I do as well.

Work-life balance is pretty important to me. Being a very outdoors person, I love getting out and being quite active. I go camping, fishing, of course, seeing family as well.

Before I went to Water Corporation, I went to uni and I studied coastal environmental science, as well as occupational health and safety, in the hopes to potentially get into coastline management. With Water Corporation, it's good to know that we do have so many different opportunities out there. So potentially, in the future I could head there, but so far, safety has actually been quite enjoyable.

I feel it's a very supportive corporation for its employees, always looking out for people's mental health being number one.

People I've worked with, always willing to upskill people or uplift them in their roles.