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eFlash #462

eFlash #462

eFlash #462
Date: 04-Dec-2020

In this edition: Directors General Appointment Announcements| NPR Review Information| BoM Water Information Products and Webinars| qldwater Website - Resource Library Search Functionality Upgraded| Fundamentals Webinar - last one for 2020! | Did you know! 

1. Directors General Appointment Announcements 

The updated list of Queensland Government Minister and DG appointments is available here.

 Many departments are reporting business as usual while others await some other key executive appointments. We believe that all main water functions from DNRME will transition across to the new “DRDMW” but the reporting relationships for key functional areas of interest (regulator, policy, planning etc) are still to be formally announced.

2. NPR Review Information

A project has commenced to review all the National Performance Report (NPR) indicators, designed to ensure that annual performance reporting remains relevant to the urban water sector nationally. BoM held an online meeting Tuesday to start the communication process for the project and are looking for involvement from a wide range of stakeholders, including those from the water industry. qldwater is actively involved in these processes and will be coordinating responses on behalf of members as needed. 

The objective of the indicator review is to identify an agreed set of lasting national outcome areas, associated indicators and definitions, and performance metrics. The review wants to ensure national relevance, remove redundant indicators, align with other indicator sets across jurisdictions and avoid complexity, all this without increasing the effort needed to provide data. 

Importantly for smaller Service Providers, part of the review is looking at the possibility of including <10,000 connection Service Providers in future NPR.

We will be working with our state government colleagues to attempt to ensure that there is strong alignment with the state KPI framework, and that service providers are only required to report information which is actually used in monitoring performance or benchmarking, and can be reliably gathered without significant burden. 

The NPR indicator review runs until March 2022. 

If you would like to keep up with what is happening with the indicator review project you can register at: https://www.npr.harc.com.au/. More information can be found on the BoM website (http://www.bom.gov.au/water/npr/indicator-review.shtml).

We will be posting updates as more information is available and will soon distribute our “first pass” review of the current NPR indicators – particularly which are redundant and which definitions are problematic for members and need work. 

3. BoM Water Information Products and Webinars

BoM has some valuable products now available online. Some of these, such as its ‘Seasonal Streamflow forecasts (http://www.bom.gov.au/water/ssf/index.shtml)’, may be useful to you as planning tools.

BoM offers an email subscription to many of these products on its “Water Information” website (http://www.bom.gov.au/water/index.shtml - click on the “Subscribe to e-news” button on the right hand side). 

BoM also produces some interesting Webinars. The next one (Thursday, 3 December, 2.00-3.00 pm AEDT) is on “Summer 2020–21 climate and water update”. BoM’s climate experts will provide an update on temperature, rainfall and other conditions to date, and an in-depth look at the outlook for summer 2020–21. You can register for the webinar at https://bomwebinars.webex.com/bomwebinars/onstage/g.php?MTID=e44456a2bd40d8d852518500ab6811f87 

4. qldwater Website - Resource Library Search Functionality Upgraded 

If you’ve been having trouble finding the documents you are looking for in our extensive Resource Library, then things have just become a little bit easier.

The improved search functionality on the Resource Library home page looks at media downloads only and doesn’t search the actual site, so it’s a bit different to the search button at the top of our website.

 The page still features a range of topics as well, so if you just want to browse the current offerings you can do it that way instead. Topics include:

  • Whole of Business (things that affect the whole business, not just certain parts)
  • Water Source (documents relating to catchments, dams, rivers, bores etc)
  • Water Treatment (documents relating to water treatment plants and associated processes)
  • Water Network (documents relating to pipes, reservoirs, pump stations etc)
  • Customers / Retail (customer service standards, pricing, community engagement, demand management etc)
  • Sewage Treatment (documents relating to sewage treatment plants and associated processes)
  • Sewage Network (sewage pipes, pump stations etc)
  • Recycle / Reuse (documents relating to biosolids, water recycling and reuse)

Each topic page has five tabs across the top to separate documents into:

  • qldwater resources (things we produce ourselves e.g. fact sheets, manuals, reviews)
  • other resources (documents from research organisations, government departments etc relating to our industry)
  • member sample documents (documents provided to us from member organisations who kindly offered to share with our network, including position descriptions, plans, reports etc)
  • contracts and specifications (updated weekly from water and sewerage related requests for tender posted on LGAQ Vendorpanel / LG Tenderbox, Local Buy and Qld Government QTenders), and
  • presentations from our and other events.

There really is no need to reinvent the wheel, so make sure you head to our Resource Library before you even ask Google, and if you still can’t find what you’re looking for contact qldwater or consider a post on the zoho forum – there’s every chance someone else has already considered it and our industry is exceptional at sharing.

 As always, we welcome feedback so we can continue to improve our member experience.

5. Fundamentals Webinar - last one for 2020!

Join us on Tuesday 8 December at 10am for the final Fundamentals Webinar for 2020 to learn more about ‘Water Main Flushing & Environmental Impacts’ from Murray Thompson. Register now. 

6. Did you know! 

Did you know that all our previous Essentials and Fundamentals Webinars are available to watch in your own time from our website? Please find links below: 

Essentials Webinars - https://qldwater.com.au/essentials-webinar-series 

Fundamentals Webinars - https://qldwater.com.au/fundamentals-webinar-series

Please note, Fundamentals Webinars are only accessible to qldwater members and Water Skills Partners.

qldwater is a business unit of IPWEAQ 

 

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