eFlash #544
Date: 21-Jul-2022
In this edition: qldwater Annual Forum – Registrations Now Open| Gympie Conference Wrap
1. qldwater Annual Forum – Registrations Now Open
The Queensland Water Directorate (qldwater) invites you to join us for our Annual Forum on the Gold Coast 6th-8th September 2022.
This year’s forum is being graciously supported by City of Gold Coast with most events based at HOTA – Home of the Arts and a day tour around the Gold Coast.
A copy of the draft programs for the three days is available on our event website.
If you have not been to one of our forums before, it is not something you will want to miss! A chance to network with over 100 water industry professionals, typically including representatives from more than 30 utilities.
It will be a great opportunity to network with likeminded people, as such there will be no virtual registrations for this forum but we will have online access in mind as a backup in the unlikely event of travel restrictions.
Day 1 – Research and Innovation Showcase – 6 September
For the last few years, the first day of the qldwater Annual Forum has focussed on a technical topic of broad interest to members with 2021 looking at automated metering. 2022 is a bit of everything, kindly supported by members of the SEQ Research and Innovation Group and Water Services Association of Australia. Join us to hear about the kinds of technologies water and sewerage service providers should be considering in the coming decade, short presentations from water service providers on a number of water and sewerage examples available now, approaches to help develop business cases and opportunities for joint investment in initiatives – getting better bang for buck from a whole industry approach. Our themes for the event ensure it will be as inclusive as possible:
- Fit for purpose/ place
- Utility led, not vendors
- Whole of life cycle cost considerations
- Engaging for a broad audience including regional and remote providers
- Doesn’t have to be a “whole thing” – can include process enhancements, tweaks and simple things to deliver value
Day 2 – Tours and fun stuff 7 September
We have site tours lined up for the Tugun desalination plant with thanks to Seqwater, and Merrimac recycled water projects with thanks to City of Gold Coast, where there has been a major investment and a range of new completed construction and cool stuff to check out.
The rest of the day will include lunch in the park by the beach at Australia’s tourism capital (under marquees just in case), the Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test, some presentations from City of Gold Coast on local issues and challenges and the annual vendor pitches – which support scholarships for qldwater members to attend industry events.
Day 2 – Conference dinner 7 September
A great opportunity to network with industry representatives from across the state, with entertainment supplied via “A beer and a chat with the Elder Water Professionals.”
Day 3 – Industry strategy 8 September
We are still finalising our guest invitations but this is our chance each year to work through broader industry strategy (the qldwater “Roadmap”) to consider how we incorporate the significant disruptions over the last couple of years and adapting water businesses to the “new normal.” The focus issues will largely be determined by you, but many members are dealing with increasing pressures around supply chain, increasing regulation, extreme events and betterment, population growth, sourcing skills including operations and different ways staff work.
Always highly interactive and thought-provoking, the strategy day is critical in shaping qldwater’s advocacy on your behalf.
Sponsorship opportunities are still available across the three days. If you are interested in sponsoring any of the days, please contact Naomi Carragher on 07 3632 6850 or ncarragher@qldwater.com.au.
This is a great opportunity to connect with your peers across the state. We hope to see you there!
2. Gympie Conference Wrap
Thanks to everyone who braved the cold to join us for the Gympie Regional Conference last week, and a big shout out to Peter Manning and the Gympie crew for hosting the event and showing us around.
The bus tour on Wednesday afternoon included a drive around Gympie to see some of the pump stations that were inundated during the 2022 floods and visits to the Gympie Water Treatment Plant and the Wastewater Treatment Plant. Peter explained the processes they have in place from the moment they become aware of potential flood events through to the recovery stage – the system is working well after many years of practice with Gympie being such a flood prone region (and there are a lot of switchboards to consider).
The dinner at the Bunker Smokehouse was a great opportunity for informal networking with delicious food and a bar tab – and the Queensland State of Origin win was the cherry on the cake for the evening.
On Thursday, 14 July we gathered at The Pavilion Conference and Reception to hear a range of interesting technical presentations including lessons learnt from ARC Flash training at Unitywater, the handback of the Rubyanna WWTP to Bundaberg Regional Council, water security and coastal sewer strategies in the Fraser Coast and Bundaberg regions as well as updates from the DRDMW and DES.
qldwater newcomer Jess Dean made her debut with her presentation “What do Ash Barty, Powderfinger and Geoffrey Rush have in common?” – the answer: they’re all Queensland born superstars, but they are only superstars because water treatment operators have supplied them with clean and safe drinking water at some stage of their life – without that, they’d be dead, and we all need a bit of entertainment in our lives. The real superstars are the water treatment operators, so we thank you all!
The event also included an attraction hack session, with six international students from Southern Cross Uni and QUT attending the event as part of a QWRAP project to engage with university students. Shaun Johnston provided an overview of the challenges and benefits of working in a small regional Council before we teased out some information from the students to build another persona to add to our list of non-traditional employment market segments. We had some technical difficulties with the hack session, but feedback from the students were very positive and some great new connections were made. More information on this will follow.
qldwater members can access the recordings of all the presentations on our website at https://qldwater.com.au/gympie-conference-2022 (please log in to view the page).
We’ve also added some photos of the event to our Smugmug site at https://qldwater.smugmug.com/Regional-Conferences/Gympie-Regional-Conference-July-2022/ or watch a short video of the site tour at https://animoto.com/play/6Rs6it79Dim6kAaJsM4w8g
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