Company: Schindler Lifts Australia Pty Ltd
Title: Legal counsel
Age: 30
As national legal counsel for Schindler, Karen Kehoe travels to all states to carry out training programs and advice sessions twice yearly. This has increased the engagement of the business with the legal department and means that Kehoe is involved in a variety of projects all over Australia from tender review, sales negotiation, and project disputes to public liability claims. In 2019, she was involved in the tender and negotiation of a major project to the value of $60 million. This was one of the biggest contracts ever awarded to Schindler in Australia, and a massive achievement for Kehoe when the final contract was signed after months of negotiations. The same year, she realised that there was a misconception and worry amongst the field technicians that a public liability claim for Schindler would result in a personal prosecution of the technician carrying out the maintenance. So, in conjunction with the operations manager, Kehoe created a new training program to educate the technicians on their rights and responsibilities when servicing lift equipment and dealing with the public. Another initiative she took was to review the current template documents used by sales and project management in conjunction with engineering and quality for a more productive discussion and review.
