Karen Chia | Water Supply Manager | Sydney Water
In my 2004 interview, I was asked what I wanted to contribute to the future of Sydney Water. I said desalination. Twenty years later, I’m managing the Sydney Desalination Plant contract—I had no idea that’s where I’d end up.
Role
Water Supply Manager, Sydney Water
About my role
I manage Sydney Water bulk water supply, along with the water supply agreements, long term operations contracts and chemicals contracts. There is no typical work. It ranges from looking at contingency plans for a major outage, strategising the best operational/commercial position for Sydney Water, responding to an incident or looking at our water plant performance and ways we can make them better.
Career journey
I started my career in 2004 as a graduate rotating in several positions before winning a permanent role in the Wastewater Operations optimisation team at the end of the graduate rotation in 2006. After two years in the role, I successfully won an EOI to take on a one-year contract officer role managing wastewater operation contracts. I enjoyed it thoroughly and won the permanent position when it came up.
I spent over five years in that role, steadily building my expertise across all wastewater operation contracts, before being promoted to Senior Contract Manager. With that step up came a new focus: water operations contracts and water supply agreements.
In 2015, I was promoted to Bulk Water Integration Manager, taking on responsibility for all bulk water operations and water agreements. In 2020, I stepped into my current role as Water Supply Manager overseeing bulk water operations, water supply agreements and long term operation contracts and chemical contracts.
What I enjoy most
The people! I have been fortunate to work with various people in different groups and project and what makes the job both satisfying and interesting is seeing so many other passionate people trying to deliver the work successfully.
What I’ve learned
Listen to what other people need to say. Being in a role that revolves around many different stakeholders, it pays to listen before working out a solution or jumping into conclusion.
Advice to others
Do give it a go. There are so many areas in operations you can be involved in. Just need to find what you are passionate about and you will find that it is highly rewarding when you find a solution to what you are working on.
100 Women Nomination
What Ben Blayney, Head of Water Supply & Production, Sydney Water said about Karen:
Karen is a highly talented and dedicated leader, with exceptional skills in operations commercial management for over 20 years. She leads the Water Supply team managing bulk water supply for Sydney as well over 500M per annum in strategic contracts. Karen is an exceptional role model for all our staff and continues to foster and develop our people at Sydney Water.
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