One day with… Ellis, Emergency Planning Support Analyst

It has only been a month since Ellis started her 10-month placement as an Emergency Planning Support Analyst at Uniper’s Ratcliffe-On-Soar Power Station. Despite the short amount of time, the 20 year old Emergency and Disaster Management student from Nottingham already feels like she’s learned a lot. With no prior knowledge of the energy sector, working in an energy production company driving energy transition has been very interesting and opened Ellis’ eyes to a whole new world of opportunities.

Under her job title Ellis helps with the Crisis Management of site, the Business Continuity and Business Impact Analysis, review of the emergency plan and coordinating training and exercises for site. Currently, she is reinventing the emergency plan to be more easily consumed and readily available, in the form of an infographic poster and an online interactive test with the goal of ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in case of an emergency. Since Ellis is still in the early stages of her placement, she is being introduced to new and exciting projects, such as working with Nottingham Fire and Rescue Service to organize an exercise for site, collaborating with a contracted company (Evolution Risk Awareness (RA)) to deliver Incident and Emergency Controller scenario training to the people on shift and to ensure everyone is comfortable with the expectations during the process of responding to an incident on site.

Another project Ellis has been involved with is assisting in a simulated scenario in which a Sodium Hypochlorite tanker on site has a chemical leak that involved two casualties. The shift workers enacted their roles as Ellis observed the exercise and is currently assisting in compiling the learnings to aid the improvement in response if this incident was to occur. “It is really interesting to see what I have learnt at university in real life as a scenario”, Ellis says.

In her team of six people, Ellis feels comfortable and well supported by her line manager and other colleagues. Having never worked in such a large company, Ellis was relieved to see how friendly, welcoming and helpful Uniper’s employees are and is looking forward to the next 10 months of her time at Ratcliffe. After her placement, she will go on to write her dissertation and complete her final year at Coventry University. With this in mind she is determined to make the most of every opportunity offered to her. “I think I’ll be able to learn so many different things, the people here have so much knowledge and experience that I’m hoping to get as much from it as I can”, she says.

Ellis is proud to be a part of company like Uniper who has joined the ‘Komm, mach MINT’ initiative which supports women in mathematics, information technology, natural sciences, and technology (MINT) and highlight career opportunities. Uniper wants to welcome even more talented women to our company to give them authentic insights into our exciting work. The energy future and our business offers amazing opportunities for talented and dedicated professionals.

Ellis can also imagine coming back to Uniper in the future. “I could see myself working in the energy sector and I think there are just so many opportunities in Uniper to expand my knowledge and do different things if I wanted to. I think it’s an incredible company and I’d definitely love to work for them in the future”, she explains.

Find out more about our careers opportunities