Updating Results

Hydro Tasmania

4.1
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Ajla Zulovic

It could have been challenging to juggle my family and work life if Hydro Tasmania didn’t value diversity and flexibility.

What's your background?

I was born in Bosnia, my family and I relocated to Australia when I was 8 to flee the war. We lived in WA for a couple of years until my Dad (who was an engineer) got a job at Hydro Tasmania and I’ve lived in Tasmania ever since. At school I was always very good at maths and science subjects, I decided to pursue engineering because a career in science seemed too open ended. 
Although my dad worked as an engineer at Hydro Tasmania, that wasn’t the reason why I started working here. I won a scholarship at Uni which was funded by Hydro Tasmania and it included work experience in my 3rd year of study. I then continued to work 1 day a week in my final year to complete my honours project. I was then successful in my application to the Graduate Program.

After 3 years, my final rotation on the program was in the Major Works team which is where I stayed. I spent a lot of time working on large capital projects out on site. During the Tasmanian Energy Crisis I stepped into an Outage/Project Manager role for our Tamar Valley Station, which is a combined cycle gas plant. Once the outage was over I became the Workshop Manager at the newly acquired workshop. 

When I fell pregnant I worked with the business to transition out of the Workshop Manager role and enjoyed 18 months off work on parental leave. With a young family I wanted to come back to work 3 days a week and have a healthy work life balance. This meant it wasn’t sustainable for me to continue working in Major Works on projects that involved frequent travel. I’m currently on a secondment in the Asset Strategy and Risk team until my child is in school when I plan to transition back into project work.

What's your job about?

There are 3 main components of my role;
I work with specialist engineers/subject matter experts of specific asset classes (turbines, valves etc) to understand the lifecycle of each part on a machine or plant and establish a routine maintenance schedule in the most optimal way. 

When a machine or plant is at it’s end of life, instead of routine maintenance it needs to be shut down and refurbished which will take several months and require a significant financial investment. I help plan these capital projects over a 10 year window and identify the best time for the outage to take place. 

I then work on the business cases to fund these outages. We need to demonstrate to the board that the financial investment to refurbish the machine/plant now will result in significant profits for the next 20 or 30 years. 
In Asset Strategy and Risk we are involved in everything and work will all the other Asset teams including Civil, Production Operations and Major Works.

Did you always know you wanted to work in this field?

No. I didn’t know that I wanted to work in my current portfolio planning role. I’ve always been interested in the planning and scheduling of works, I enjoy being organised. It made sense for my personal situation and it’s turned out to be a great fit! 

What is most rewarding about your job?

Instead of subcontracting works, Hydro Tasmania complete most of their work internally. This means that we have many experienced engineers, some would say experts in their fields working here, that you get to work with daily. It also means that you get to be involved in all the different phases of projects from start to end. And because so many of us have been working at Hydro Tasmania for a long time, we are a really tight knit team.

What were some of the challenges you faced in getting to where you are now?

Working in the renewable energy industry is really competitive, you really have to stand out to be successful as a graduate.

In my graduate year the two highest achieving graduates were female, but regardless of our academic results people assumed I got my scholarship and job because I am female, which is very frustrating. On the flip side, it’s novel to lean into being different and there are some other great opportunities that can come from it.

It could have been challenging to juggle my family and work life if Hydro Tasmania didn’t value diversity and flexibility.

3 pieces of advice for you would give women who want to work in your industry?

  • You don’t have to always fit in with the guys, embrace that you bring something different to the table.
  • Take all the opportunities you’re given! Don’t worry about peoples perception of special treatment because if you don’t make the most of it there will always be a lack of diversity.
  • Be wary of impostor syndrome and self doubt, believe in yourself!