Full Profile
Alena is a core member of the firm's resilience team. The team delivers solutions to clients with the aim of building organisational resilience.
Alena’s client experience spans both private and public sectors and includes defence, energy, gas, construction, infrastructure, mining, aviation and rail. As a deep specialist in all aspects of health safety and security, her practice includes occupational health and safety, security and anti-terrorism, biosecurity, cybersecurity, product safety, maritime safety, aviation safety, rail safety, construction safety, food safety, road safety and chain of responsibility.
Alena has extensive experience advising government departments on complying with WHS legislation. Alena is particularly sought after to develop bespoke integrated environment, health, safety and security management systems in complex and hazardous industry settings. She has a particular interest in innovation, and has developed a niche in building technological solutions for safety and security management.
With her background in behavioural science as well as law, Alena is highly sought after as a facilitator of applied skills training and workshops. She provides coaching, training and mentoring services to build safety leaders at all levels of organisations from senior executives through to the shop floor.
Alena also assists clients with incident response and investigation processes as part of our 24/7 emergency response service and represents clients in responding to regulatory investigations, coronial inquests and defending regulatory prosecutions. She is able to respond to serious incidents offshore, as she is OPITO BOSIET qualified having completed her helicopter underwater escape training.
Alena is recommended by Chambers & Partners 2024 in Health & Safety and listed as a 'Leading Individual' in Labour and Employment by Legal 500 2024.
Experience
- Mining and resources – Undertaking a global benchmarking review for a global mining and resources company which involved developing an assessment model, surveying the businesses of the company and 10 peers and reporting on best practice in safety across industries. Participants in the projects included leading companies in the aviation, rail, defence forces, construction, manufacturing, mining and oil & gas.
- Security – Developed the safety and security management arrangements for Australia’s G20 host year, developing an easy-to-use WHS Manual, provided peer review of security risk assessments and training to personnel in the lead up to G20 host year major events held in Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney.
- Safety – Developed the safety management system of a major military organisation, including the development of work procedures in conjunction with subject matter experts. The work also included the development of a due diligence framework for senior leadership, implementation of the system, and post-development staff training programmes for implementation.
- Contractor Management – Developed contractor management systems for government agencies and departments in line with best practice WHS procedures in contracts and guidelines and handbooks and training for procurement officers.
- Energy & resources – Conducted a global best practice study into positive performance indicators on behalf of a major electricity distributor, making recommendations for specific positive performance indicators for the organisation's safety strategy.
- Explosives – Conducted a major explosives legislation review for a major government department. This project involved 3 phases: the review of all explosives legislation applicable to the organisation, the identification and review of publications relevant to EO management, a desktop review of whether the Defence publications complied with the various legislative requirements with recommendations for future directions.
- WHS Prosecution Mock Trials – Developed bespoke WHS prosecution mock trials for major government departments, airlines, the construction industry, the energy industry and the Safety Institute of Australia based on learning lessons from incidents and near miss events within those industries and organisations.
- Inquests – Acted for an electricity utility company in a landmark case relation to a fatal incident involving a line worker including an application to the Supreme Court of NSW quashing initial coronial findings of a work related cause of death and acting in the subsequent coronial inquest which determined the cause of death to be a coronary artery disease and not related to the work being performed.
- Inquiries – Acted on behalf of a doctor in the Queensland Public Hospital's Commission of Inquiry obtaining a positive outcome for the doctor when no adverse findings against the doctor were made in the Report of the Commission of Inquiry.
