Snenhlanhla Phakathi

Environmental professional with experience in renewable energy construction and operational environments across large-scale solar and wind energy projects in South Africa. Skilled in construction environmental compliance, EMPr implementation, ESG reporting, environmental auditing, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 systems, contractor management, and environmental incident investigation. Experienced in ensuring compliance with Environmental Authorisations, General Authorisations, lender requirements, and project EHSS specifications during construction phases.

Strong ability to coordinate with contractors, project teams, and stakeholders to support sustainable project execution and environmental risk management.

Environmental Officer at SINOHYDRO SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD/POWERCHINA HUADONG ENGINEERING CORPORATION LIMITED (2024-11 – Present)

• Ensure construction-phase environmental compliance with Environmental Management Programmes (EMPrs), Environmental Authorisations (EA), General Authorisations (GA), and project EHSS specifications.
• Implement and monitor Environmental Management Plans (EMPs) across construction activities.
• Conduct environmental inspections, monitoring, and audits to ensure contractor and subcontractor compliance with environmental requirements.
• Coordinate environmental compliance activities between contractors, subcontractors, project management, and environmental stakeholders.
• Conduct environmental monitoring relating to waste management, water usage, noise, dust, biodiversity protection, and pollution prevention.
• Support environmental incident management through reporting, investigation support, corrective actions, and implementation of preventative measures.
• Facilitate environmental awareness training and toolbox talks for employees, contractors, and subcontractors.
• Maintain environmental compliance documentation, monitoring records, audit findings, and corrective action registers.
• Assist in the protection and conservation of natural resources, including protected plant relocation, topsoil management, and biodiversity protection measures.
• Collaborate with HSE, Quality, and Construction teams to ensure integrated environmental and safety compliance across project activities.
• Conduct internal environmental audits and support continuous improvement initiatives to strengthen environmental performance on site.

HSE Document Controller at SINOHYDRO SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD/POWERCHINA HUADONG ENGINEERING CORPORATION LIMITED (2024-07 – 2024-10)

• Liaise with the Project Manager, Engineers, technicians
• Developed HSE Integrated management system
• Developed ESMS management plans which align with EMPr, GA for water use & Environmental Authorization for management of site activities.
• Achieved 85% on the first audit of the H & S systems audit
• Coordinated with Quality department to ensure document quality & coordination of RAMS from Subcontractors to Client
• Ensuring site personnel always have the latest version of documents & drawings
• Weekly & Monthly HSE Stats reporting
• Control and coordinate the creation, review, approval, and revision of HSE documents.
• Maintain version control of HSE documents to prevent unauthorized changes.
• Ensure quick and easy retrieval of HSE documents as needed.

HSE Intern at GLOBELEQ SOUTH AFRICA MANAGEMENT SERVICES (PTY) LTD (2023-01 – 2024-06)

• Oversee and conduct regular environmental, field and site inspections to assess compliance with license conditions.
• Ensure that sampling of water at facilities with boreholes is done at a SANS accredited Laboratory as stated in the water use license.
• Identify and address environmental violations by developing and recommending solutions to eliminate pollution and environmental impacts.
• Ensure relevant environmental and waste policies, processes, practices and procedures are implemented and enforced.
• Address environmental incidents such as chemical leaks and spills.
• Raising environmental awareness campaigns/efforts
• Monitor and update the aspect and impact registers.
• Prepare environmental reports as requested by regulatory bodies, shareholders/lenders, and management.
• Weekly HSE - analysis of leading indicators and credibility of data.
• Monthly/Quarterly Environmental reporting, taking into consideration scope 1, 2 & 3 of sustainability reporting.
• Reporting on Health and Safety, Waste generated (analysis on origin and mitigation measures to decrease volumes), Water Consumption, Environmental compliance as per lenders request.
• Analysis and reporting on monthly variation, contributing factors and establish trends.
• Collaborated cross-functionally with stakeholders to gather ESG data, ensuring accuracy and completeness.
• Analysed ESG performance metrics and prepared reports for internal and external stakeholders, including investors, regulators, and rating agencies.
• Supported sustainability initiatives by providing insights and recommendations based on ESG analysis.
• Assisted in the preparation of ESG reports and disclosures for inclusion in annual sustainability reports.
• Successfully obtained certification in 2023 (objective archived) for ISO 14001 & ISO 45001
• Document control - Maintaining an effective administration system, ensuring that all required documentation and records are kept and maintained effectively as per ISO 14001 & ISO 45001 clauses on SharePoint.
• Closed out findings from internal and external audits.
• Training and development of site management and personnel on the system
• Ongoing management and monitoring of site objectives & targets.
• Implementation of management plans
• Successful implementation of ISO 45001 and ISO 45001 across the organization (8 sites and two offices)
• Maintained, modified, and reviewed environmental permits and licenses & compliance register on an ongoing basis.
• Waste management ensured that waste was disposed of at the legal landfill site and transported lawfully.
• Ensure compliance with all relevant regulations and procedures to prevent fruitless, wasteful, and irregular expenditure.
• Educate workers on environmental, health and safety procedures and raise awareness on Environmental matters.
• Compliance with lenders' requirements
• Conduct environmental monitoring and evaluation of compliance conditions set in Environmental Authorizations (EA) to ensure the developments are done in line with the approved Scoping Report, EIAR, and the EMPr.
• Ensuring that no significant non-compliance is issued by the Department of Employment and Labour, Department of Environment, Forestry and Fishery, Department of Water and Sanitation, Department of Labour.
• Analysis of conditions no longer applicable at the operation phase and ensuring that amendments are made on licenses and authorizations where required.
• Ensured that licenses that were no longer required were surrendered.
• Update and maintain compliance register.
• Monitor bird and bat monitoring team.
• Identify and solve problems creatively whilst demonstrating high integrity in line with the company's core values
• Maintain effective working relationships with Contractors.
• Ensuring certification of all applicable permanent contractors.
• Auditing permanent contractors
• Assist the contractor in closing gaps identified in the audits and reaching the minimum threshold.
• Monitoring and assuring that temporary & permanent subcontractors perform in terms of legal and contractual HSE obligations and per the agreed procedures, processes, plans, and specifications.
• Facilitate the identification of occupational H & S hazards, risks, key undesirable events, applicable Life-saving Rules and the associated preventive and corrective controls.
• Incident investigations and implementation of corrective measures
• Ensuring the organization's legal documentation is up to date.
• Coordinate the internal and external audits.
• Induction Trainings
• Approve safety files for contractors.
• Overview and report on the company's accident statistics and make recommendations for correction of problem areas.
• Serve on the relevant established Committees (HSE Committee) and provide an advisory role on non-compliance and potential non-compliance areas.
• Conduct weekly HSE awareness sessions.
• Implementation of HSE inspection on organization digital software / system.
• Manage overall HSE activities to reduce loss and liability and identify and eliminate safety concerns.

SHEQ Intern at WASTEPLAN (PTY) LTD (2022-04 – 2023-01)

• Instituting and maintaining a SHEQ management system in line with ISO-compliant integrated management systems (ISO 14001, 45001 and ISO 9001)
• SHEQ communication and awareness
• Daily and monthly monitoring

Bachelor of Social Science in Geography & Environmental Management – University of KwaZulu-Natal

Matric in Grade 12 – Earlington Secondary School