Back in the summer, we welcomed the first five of our Black interns as part of our commitment to the 10,000 Black Interns programme, which is designed to improve the diversity of the UK’s professional industries by offering paid internships to Black people over five years.
Along with one other intern, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Babajide Olujinmi for the past six weeks, who has joined our Safety, Health and Environment Team for his placement at our St Mary Cray office.
My line managers made sure I hit the ground running from day one, giving me my project task to carry out the update of the environmental risk assessment register and drawing out a master action plan for depots across the company.
I had a site visit to a live biogas project we’re handling in Twickenham and we were there to assess the behavioural health and safety compliance on site.
The experience was an eye-opener to the role a Health and Safety professional plays in safeguarding employees on site, especially on a busy area in the proximity of the Twickenham Rugby Stadium. SGN is big on Health, Safety and Environmental Management – this is obvious!
I’m impressed by the pioneering projects SGN is involved in to achieve the net zero target in 2050 for England and 2045 for Scotland. One of these projects is H100 Fife in Scotland to bring hydrogen to homes and businesses – I believe this is the future of the gas industry.
I’m proud to be part of a company that is taking real step to change the face of gas by bringing green gas to homes. I’m hoping to visit this site before the end of my internship – let’s hope my dream comes true!
The huge training opportunities I’ve been exposed to through People Portal have really impressed me. I’ve been enrolled into the sustainability school and I’m taking advantage of free learning resources.
The enthusiasm of people willing to help has been amazing and it helps if you are willing to ask the right questions.
I appreciate everyone that has so far been involved in making my experience worthwhile.
Carolina Karlstrom, Head of Sustainability, said:
“It’s been a pleasure working with Babajide over the last few weeks. He is genuinely interested in what we do and very keen to learn. He picks up things really quickly and Faye Hyslop, Environment Manager Scotland & NI, and myself have had to come up with new ideas for tasks to help us with as he completed them really quickly!
“Among other things he has built a master action list with actions arising from all our environmental inspections, making sure it is easier for us to track improvements, and he also updated the inspections with information about environmentally protected and/or sensitivities areas. He has been visiting a number of sites with our colleagues from the SHE Team who all say how enthusiastic and engaging Babajide is, both in appreciating the work we do and in giving his own insights.”
