Lauren Fox

I am an experienced water treatment process control technician working with my current employer Essex and Suffolk Water for 10 years. I started in 2013 as an apprentice and became fully qualified in 2016, completing a Level 3 Water Engineering diploma with Watertrain.

My duties and responsibilities include:

• Carrying out site investigations relating to asset or water quality failures, that could impact the treatment process. This includes root cause analysis, fault finding and water quality testing (such as chlorine, turbidity and iron)
• Producing reports and graphs related to investigations using Microsoft software (Excel, Powerpoint and Word)
• Laboratory testing for chemical dosing, and then advising the site teams of changes they could make to the plant to either combat an issue or optimise the process
• Micro-managing the filter refurbishment sub-programme, ensuring the most vital treatment processes are running at their optimum with the correct bed depth. Done on a routine basis and preparing the rural treatment works for summer demand, as a result of routine inspections
• Preparing and gathering information for regulatory audits, when these arise either routinely or due to a water quality event or failure
• Technical assistance and stakeholder responsibilities on capital projects - I'm currently the Process Support stakeholder for a £50million+ project to upgrade a treatment works at Barsham, to increase resilience and secure supply for current and future demand. To date this has involved supplying water quality data to the contractors, and advisories relating to water treatment that are specific to our water chemistry in Suffolk. Ongoing it will include manual testing and working with the Asset Investment team to develop and carry out smooth and timely commissioning of new plant and equipment
• I was also heavily involved in a recent company treatment works upgrade at Syleham, where I helped to develop and implement commissioning plans
• Forming part of a supervisor standby rota since April 2021
• Borehole drilling and remedial work assistance, mainly involving testing and sampling
• Working in compliance with ISO stan, completing job-based risk assessments and task-based 60 second health and safety checks