2012 Excellence Award Winners Announced

The winner and highly commended awards for the 2012 Innovation in Water Supply and Wastewater category were announced at the IPWEA's Excellence Awards Dinner on Tuesday evening at the Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour.

We are pleased to announce that Eurobodalla Shire Council was winner of this award for the construction of the $24 million Eurobodalla Northern Water Treatment Plant. Warren Sharpe from Eurobodalla Shire accepted this award on behalf of his Council and his partners in the project.

Water Infrastructure Group was the successful contractor for construction of the WTP and their early involvement in the project enabled a close partnership to be built with Eurobodalla Shire Council and the project manager, NSW Public Works. Water Infrastructure Group owns and operates major treatment plants and water recycling schemes and brought an operations and overall lifecycle focus to the partnership. The shift of focus from capital and construction costs to long-term operability delivered major benefits to the Eurobodalla community.

Water Infrastructure Group’s ‘Virtual Control Room’ concept is ideally suited to regional facilities, providing substantial safety and productivity benefits for operators, as well as operational cost savings and flexibility. The operations team can monitor and control the facilities with Smartphones from literally anywhere in the world. This allows them to focus on managing the overall system instead of being continually on call at the plants or spending time travelling to and from facilities.

The highly commended award was won by Cooma-Monaro Shire Council for their recently completed Water and Wastewater Strategic Planning Review. This report is a comprehensive review of the services and planning required for Cooma’s community over the next 30 years. Work undertaken for the towns of Cooma, Michelago, Nimmitabel and Bredbo includes developing a water security Safe Yield Analysis, Demand Management Plan, Drought Management Plan, Integrated Water Cycle Management Evaluation Study, Water Quality Management Plan, Business Continuity Plan, Strategic Business Plan, Development Servicing Plans and Enterprise Risk Assessment.

The Water Directorate strongly encourages all our members to nominate for the 2013 Excellence Awards in November. The Excellence Awards are a great way to showcase your staff and projects. Finally, congratulations to the organisers from IPWEA and everyone involved in the hosting of this successful event.