Last month we had an interview with Johan van Middelaar, the programme manager of the SDN Innovation Centre. This time we would like to introduce Denise Harkema.
Denise is the Programme Manager of the SDN Knowledge Centre and has been working on setting up the SDN Knowledge Centre since February. In this newsletter she briefly introduces herself.
Good afternoon Denise, thank you for introducing yourself today. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Of course! I am Denise, born and raised in the Rotterdam area. At an early age I developed an interest in technology and chemistry. After a number of years of learning and studying, I started working as a chemical technologist at Bilfinger Tebodin's process safety team in 2013. In my work with this organisation since then, I have had the opportunity to visit different companies in different sectors. It has inspired me to see how each company has its own way of thinking and doing things, but also how, each time, the employees have a heart for the business. Over the years, all these different projects at companies have helped me broaden my knowledge of the field of (process) safety. Today, I combine my work at Safety Delta Nederland with the work I do as an HSE Management Consultant at Bilfinger Tebodin.
A milestone for me was winning the essay competition of Veiligheid Voorop (2016), thanks to which I was able to attend the Management of Safety, Health and Environment study programme at TUDelft. Not only did I learn an incredible amount about the Health, Safety and Environment profession, but I also made some great friends who I still often keep in touch with.
Within the SDN, we have a knowledge and an innovation centre. Could you take us briefly through the SDN Knowledge Centre?
The SDN Knowledge Centre is all about finding and making knowledge available. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge available about (process) safety concepts, and sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees anymore. As SDN, we believe that every company should have access to the best resources to improve (process) safety in its organisation. The Knowledge Centre is committed to this. In order to find specific knowledge about (process) safety and make it available in a smart way, we keep to a number of themes and develop various tools to unlock existing knowledge and information. Examples are the SDN Knowledge Bank, our Technology Catalogue, the SDN Academy and our expert networks. In addition, we want to carry out projects in co-production with other parties that contribute to the structural improvement of (process) safety in Dutch industry. Take, for example, our Process Safety Quickscan, in which we take companies through a one-day process safety assessment of their location. We also work together with the VNCI, among others, on this.
What gives you energy to work with Safety Delta Netherlands and the SDN Knowledge Centre?
It gives me energy to work with people and to investigate how we can together contribute to the improvement of (process) safety in Dutch industry. With the Knowledge Centre, the SDN mainly focuses on giving existing knowledge and current activities more attention and thus making them available to a wider audience.
What are the biggest opportunities and challenges in the coming period?
As far as I am concerned, the greatest opportunity for the SDN is to contribute to cooperation in the Triple Helix context (government, industry and science). In my opinion, it is very valuable to be able to illuminate one subject from different perspectives. In this way, you give each other the opportunity to acquire a broad view of a (process) safety topic and to continue to develop your own vision. A challenge for the SDN and the SDN Knowledge Centre is to gain familiarity and to demonstrate our added value in practice. Finding knowledge and making it available via our tools is one thing, but being found yourself is another. So for all our readers: spread the word about SDN!
And if we take a brief look ahead, what would you like to accomplish before the summer?
By the summer, we want to have achieved a number of things for the SDN Knowledge Centre. The first is the start-up of our first expert network. In addition, we have recently started a pilot for the SDN Academy, in which we aim to open up information about (process) safety concepts via short learning modules. This allows the user to learn more about a subject, but also to broaden or deepen the knowledge they have acquired. We would also like to further disseminate our SDN Process Safety Quickscan to companies in the industry. In this way, we do not only want to help companies further with (process) safety, but we can also find new best practices and we are better informed about the knowledge needs of the companies.
