Alyeska Pipeline engineer known as leader, mentor

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – As director of right-of-way and emergency preparedness and compliance, Lorena Hegdal takes on major responsibilities for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., assuring the soundness of the 800-mile long pipeline critical to the Alaska economy.

“I like the fact that we are out there ensuring the integrity of the pipeline system, to make sure there are no spills and no issues along the right of way,” said Hegdal from her office in Fairbanks. “The other big piece of the job is oil spill preparedness. We have lots of scheduled maintenance, but our work is never routine. We have many drills, to make sure our folks can set boom and respond to a simulated spill.”

Hegdal joined Alyeska in April 2000 after 24 years with the Alaska Department of Transportation. She is well known in the company for her managerial skills, said Mike Joynor, senior vice president of operations for Alyeska.

“We can count on her to deliver, in a fashion that brings her team along too,” Joynor said.

She has a wealth of experience in engineering, and she’s very thorough, said John Baldridge, Alyeska’s senior director of pipeline.

“When she has an assignment, you can count on it getting done in very good fashion,” he said. “She gets along well with everyone in the organization and does a lot of things for the team.”

And that’s just a few of the accolades one hears in the oil industry about Hegdal, who earned a degree in civil engineering in May 1977 from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and then spent years resisting anything to do with the oil industry.

In fact, Hegdal, who oversees a multi-million dollar right-of-way budget for Alyeska, initially planned a career as a school teacher, but discovered she didn’t have the patience to teach.

She went to the DOT office in Nome and asked if they would hire her if she studied engineering at UAF. That led to a series of summer jobs with DOT, doing everything from surveying to maintaining heavy equipment.

Hegdal, born and raised in Nome, was the first Alaska Native woman to receive a degree in civil engineering from UAF. She opted for a 24-year career with DOT, on the theory that oil companies were “big bad people.”

She was working in design as a DOT engineering manager in the late 1990s when a couple of Alaska Native women friends employed at Alyeska started urging her to come work with them.

Hegdal, by now reasoning “the oil industry is where all the money came from to run the state government,” decided to give it a try, and found that the oil companies weren’t so bad after all, she said.

“I gained additional friends and relationships, and I thought I should work for the people who have been moving the oil, who have been paying my salary for the last 24 years,” she said. “I’m proud to work for Alyeska, which is part of the oil industry, and I found out it’s okay to work on this side.”

She takes seriously her responsibilities for maintaining the pipeline right-of-way, monitoring the above ground pipe system and associated support systems, including bridge inspections and preventive maintenance.

She also takes seriously time spent mentoring Alaska Native students toward careers in science and engineering, and baking her famous blueberry pies.

“We have a United Way auction here (at Alyeska) every year and her blueberry pie typically goes for $200 to $300,” Baldridge said. “She will work all day and then stay up half the night making pies and making sure we have a good United Way auction.”

The 55-year-old mother of two grown children, Charlie and Kyle, holds annual picnics at the home she shares with husband, Ian, for students in the UAF chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

The menu has included a muktuk (whale skin and blubber) bar, and Hegdal also serves up wild Alaska salmon hot off the grill. The events draw 25 to 50 students annually, and Hegdal says she makes plenty of food, so she can give them extra to take home.

“What’s important is to have passion about your work,” she tells the students. “Passion and energy are important to me. If you have good energy, it goes a long way.”

Hegdal has equal concern for the employees she works with, said Baldridge.

“She does a lot of things for the team,” Baldridge said. “When there are issues with employees who have sick kids or anything like that, Lorena is typically right in the middle of it, helping out, making contributions to the family, that sort of thing. She spends a lot of time with new employees, the interns, just a very caring person in lots of different ways.”

“She tries her best to be sure everyone is in the game,” said Joynor. “She does what she needs to do to make sure the young engineers are being coached on the process to follow. She devotes a lot of energy to growing her employees. All of our leaders try to develop employees, but she just takes it to a higher level.

“We are all getting long in the tooth, and we are trying to develop replacements to carry TAPS (Trans-Alaska Pipeline System) for the next 20 years,” Joyner added. “She takes that very, very seriously. I think that’s one of the key considerations she has when working with engineers, and she crosses boundaries, with other young people in other departments, coaching. She just wants people to be successful.”

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Information from: Alaska Journal of Commerce,
http://www.alaskajournal.com