Industry vetrean Margaret Walker of The Dow Chemical Company shares her parting thoughts on the downstream industry in the Middle East ahead of her retirement last month.
After almost 36 years of with The Dow Chemical Company, Margaret Walker, a highly respected individual across the downstream and process industry, retired in July. Her most recent role was as global vice president for engineering solutions, technology centres and manufacturing and engineering work processes for Dow.
Walker joined the company in 1974, working her way up through Dow’s global manufacturing and engineering organisation to eventually head it up, becoming one of the most influential women, not only in the company, but across the industry worldwide. She takes pride in being intimately and strategically engaged with almost every decision that goes into Dow’s capital spending on mega projects.
Amongst the major roles Walker has held with Dow, including technical and non technical positions, she was on the Steering Committee for Ras Tanura Integrated Project, providing high-level oversight for project development.
“I joined Dow as a research engineer in Freeport, Texas. I held a variety of positions in operations, gaining extensive experience in process development and scale up, plant modernisation, and process improvement projects,” Walker told RPME on the sidelines of the Petrotech conference and exhibition held in Bahrain May.
“My business and technology experiences include chlor-alkali, epoxy resins, performance chemicals and pharmaceuticals,” she said.
Speaking to RPME before her retirement, Walker pointed out several key messages to the region’s downstream industry.
Walker sees that the Middle East will be the foremost global hub for the petrochemicals industry in the not-so-distant future, and accordingly how Dow has made the region a key hub for its business.
“We have established a solid manufacturing presence in the Middle East petrochemicals industry, partnering with leading regional companies to set up state-of-the-art petrochemical complexes with global reach,” she added.
The company’s regional success in the Middle East is mainly due to its commitment to a strategy that identifies and works with highly qualified contractors and suppliers.
“We work very hard to earn our ‘license to operate’ and it is critical to build high safety standards and loss prevention principles, to implement best-in-class work processes and to train employees on process safety best practices. Last, but not least, it is important for us to work with contractors and suppliers who adhere to the highest levels of safety performance,” Walker said.
In order to build a world class facility in the region, Walker said that companies need to have a clear strategy on what they want to achieve from the project at the outset.
“They need to have a great team combined with the right technology and then build around that,” she explained.
With the growth the petrochemicals industry in the region is witnessing, Walker urged companies to focus more on education and training. “I think that this region’s biggest challenge is how to get the right education to the right people.”
Walker presented a speech at Petrotech conference on process safety and cost perspective.
She noted that manufacturing and engineering (M&E) technologies and processes play an integral role in the global petrochemicals industry, and Arabian Gulf producers are quickly growing their role in downstream manufacturing.
She went on to praise a number of technology centres that have been established throughout the region to focus on enhancing technologies to improve reliability, productivity and address key environment, health and safety issues.
Walker took the opportunity to celebrate the region’s economic growth activities.
She said the Middle East’s commitment to grow its manufacturing footprint by collaborating with international partners, who are equally committed to balancing manufacturing excellence with a commitment to safety, training and career development for the region’s growing workforces was a crucial development.
Citing Dow’s recent highlights in the Middle East as examples, she said that EQUATE, Dow and Kuwait’s PIC’s successful 15-year joint venture, and a leading producer of polyethylene and ethylene glycol, is already operating at safety levels that Dow aspires to as part of its 2015 Sustainability Goals.
“Through our various Middle East operations and joint ventures, Dow designs sustainability and reliability into the assets, using best-in-class processes and technologies – so that the facility is safe – for employees and the environment, and fully operational, enabling investors to recoup their multi-billion dollar investment quickly,” she added.
