Women’s contributions in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) often seem unsung. However, Dr Lilian Esotu, an Asset Management Strategy Lead at UK’s National Gas, in this interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme, explains that women are now taking leadership positions in STEM but acknowledged that there is still a problem facing women in this field.

Enjoy the excerpts…

We’ve had quite several women doing amazing things in technology on this set and they often talk about how sometimes they’re the only female in the room. There are some reasons adduced for this: gender bias, lack of representation and a lack of interest by women. So, which trumps the other for you?

There are quite a lot of women doing amazing things in STEM right now. It’s getting to that point where women are beginning to get leadership positions but I’d say the problem starts when women get married and start having kids and having to balance their careers especially if they have careers that require field work and spending lots of time. That’s when the population of women starts to dwindle, that’s like the big challenge — retaining women in engineering. So, I think it’s gone past not having women in engineering and it’s gone to retaining women in engineering and STEM courses.

Let’s get acquainted with your own story; what’s the backstory behind your work in the engineering field?

I started with a first degree in Petroleum Engineering, a huge beneficiary of the Federal Government. I got an all-expense paid scholarship from the Federal Government’s Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) for my MSc and PhD and then I stumbled into an interesting field not very popular at that point — reliability engineering and asset management at the University of Manchester.

That piqued my interest in turnaround maintenance. Growing up, everyone in Nigeria would hear about the turnaround maintenance of our refineries. I didn’t quite understand what that was, so when I got into that space and heard about turnaround maintenance, shutdowns and outages, it was really interesting, it was something I felt I could add value to. So, I went on to do a PhD on managing major maintenance projects.

When I was done with that, I started working with a consultancy firm, first an American consultancy firm Black & Veatch which was sold to a UK firm. From there, I moved on to another consulting firm, a Dutch-owned firm that provided services in the water technology sector. Right now, I’m with the UK National Gas Transmission which is like the backbone of the UK energy sector – it provides the infrastructure that transmits gas across the UK. So, that’s the background to my career and academic journey.

Your career is interesting to listen to. What exactly do you do as an asset manager?

The UK is a mature economy and when we say mature economy it means that most of its infrastructure has been around for ages. Comparing that to Nigeria, we’re developing; we’re starting a lot of infrastructural projects. Nigeria is in a unique place on its own which I’ll touch on later.

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For the UK, most of the transmission pipelines have been around for over 60 years and at this point, what we’re doing is mostly trying to extend the asset life, doing remodification of those assets so they keep running. It’s a different strategy in asset management.

In the UK, this phase comes with different types of regulations that have to happen even in terms of disposing of your asset, you can’t just dispose of it, you need to follow these regulatory policies and put that into practice.

For me as an asset manager, I look at an asset at whatever phase it is in. If it’s at the operations and maintenance stages. I look at how to get value for money, providing services while balancing that with the risk associated.

So, coming back to Nigeria, we have a unique opportunity because so many infrastructure projects are just coming up. We have the opportunity to start looking at this asset or infrastructure we’re putting on the ground, thinking about how are we going to run it, the kind of energy we are going to be using in 50 years. Would it still be valid using the same type of energy we’re using?

Are we making provisions for alternative sources of energy — renewable energy?
At the end of this asset life cycle, what do we want to do with it? Do we want to sell it off? Do we want to break it in parts? How do we want to dispose of it or do we want to continue maintaining it? And for you to continue running that, you need to have a great maintenance culture. You need to have great record-keeping. So, in a nutshell, that’s what I do.

So, what would you say is the key difference between the outcomes of this place (Nigeria) and that place (the UK)?

Everything is very intentional in the UK. For example, the industry I work with is regulated. They regulate the electricity and gas markets in the UK, and every five years you need to submit a plan of what you will be doing. It encompasses your whole business plan, what you would be doing to your asset? Will you be getting new assets? How would you be maintaining the asset? Some surveys are carried out. So, it’s very forward-thinking.

People need to think about things, it doesn’t just happen, and while doing that you have to follow strict international standards to maintain every piece of equipment. So, it’s you reading a lot of policy documents that need to come into for, it’s being very intentional about things and I think that’s just the difference because people think about things for a very long time and they’re very strategic about it.

They put pen to paper and then there’s penalties and then there’s rewards. So, that way people know that if I do the right thing, I get rewarded, I get more profit for my shareholders, my staffers get more bonuses. If I don’t do the right thing, I get penalised and that penalty stands like there’s no room for complacency and I think that’s just the difference. How intentional people are about what they have to do, how you have to think actually about what you want to do, it forces you to think you know long term.

The maintenance of our infrastructure back here in Nigeria, our gas infrastructure or turbines as the case may be, are famed for collapses. If you were to offer consultancy to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) for instance, what would be your intervention such that we can exit this regime of continuing power grid collapses?

First, we have to empower a regulatory system; we need to. Like I said regulation is really important, we need to empower them. There needs to be consequences for actions; people have to have established service levels if you’re going to deliver and the service levels must maintain 80% availability of your asset.

If you do not meet up to that service level there have to be penalties, people shouldn’t be rewarded for not doing the right thing. Once the right framework is in place, once people know that there’s going to be a penalty for not doing the right thing, it brings in serious investors because people want to invest where they know that their interest is protected.