We asked some of our SWIM™ and swimlocal™ customers what they love about the program, and here's what they had to say:
I was around when we used to do all those multiple reports, so the one stop shop been a great thing. How we've picked it up and run with it is we actually use SWIM™ for a data collection tool, much more than what it was actually designed for. We use SWIM™ through the whole water and sewerage, plumbing and drainage area of our whole business, so it's my one stop shop for reporting. From what Dave tells me, we are the second highest data collection point in Queensland, running about 2.83 million data points at the moment.
The major benefit I've found is when we have consultants come on board to do some reports or designs. The first thing they always ask is, you know, oh can we get it get a couple of years of data? And I quite happily tell them, Well, do you want 10 or 15? Because we've got effectively nearly 15 years’ worth of data in there. So they get a good smile on their face. It just helps with design when it comes down to those areas.
There’s nothing like having that availability of data. Because that was always one of my bugbears with councils quick to say, we'll get a consultant in and get that done. But you know, that's not relative because you think they are saving you a lot of work, but they're not because you've got to go and pull all the data together, and then they put it all in the glossy reports.
Now that's probably one of the big benefits I see of it is having that quick, easy hands on, 10 minutes to set up a report and you give them 10/15 years worth of data straight away. That's probably my biggest bonus with it all.
I think continual improvement has been a good thing for the system. Dave seems to be fairly well adapted and he certainly goes out to the market and talks to us and so he stays abreast of anything that we want. We put a couple other things through to him just recently on having a time date stamp on what time the data got entered because we have a few issues being able to tell who put it in. It’s probably easier to give you an example. We use it for data collection at our pools, because they are contract management, and what we were finding they weren't actually doing all the proper test at the right time. So you can set it up to do multiple tests a day, but you can't actually find out when they actually did the test. So I believe he's working on that one. Under their rules of engagement, they’re supposed to test minimum three to four times a day and on heavy loading. As we're responsible for the health and safety of the patrons, we want to be able to know that they were doing their morning, noon and night at least and not writing in three tests all in half an hour span. So that'll be a good thing to have, once it gets sorted.
Because I've got access to the data so freely, I can manipulate the data exactly how I want it. The Benchmarking Report are there for review and certainly for consultants to have a look at, because of all the different benchmarking that's in there, which is good information. But a lot of consultants like to manipulate the data in their own way, because a lot of it depends on what you want to do and what you're trying to achieve.
The benchmarking is good for council to see where they stand as far as other councils, and I like the comparative data, when they start talking about like for like soils, you know, instead of just comparing the small, medium and large councils. Then you can start looking at soil types and different scenarios because, when you're looking at water consumption, you're getting to your more sandy, coastal areas, well, they're not going to use, you know, preventive, usually though the water, smaller volumes are a lot more often. Whereas out in the black soil country where we are, you're better off giving it a heavy solid soak and then that's it, you get more, you'll get a couple of weeks between watering just for grass or whatever.
That's something I've been starting to show. Because I've got access to the data I can show the parks and gardens department and go look, guys, you're putting way too much water on this park or this footy field or whatever. It certainly brings that sort of stuff to the front so then they can start to look at being water wise, you know, better improve their watering schedules and things.
We use swimlocal™ in plumbing and drainage as well as our building maintenance to record building maintenance issues. And we've got it set up for the whole annual SWIM™ report, of course. But then we go in to match it up against their drinking water quality management plan for calibration of benchtop testing equipment, safety, share checks, all of those things. That's when we sit them down because I'll ask you all those questions. Well where do you hold that data. I'll just keep telling them SWIM, SWIM, SWIM. And they think it's great that we have got such access to it and they can see you just bring out SWIM™ and go yep, there it is a so they'll have a quick look at that. And so it works really well.
Because I'm running it for more of an operational perspective, I see it as a one stop shop. And as they improve some of these different things, the functionalities of it will probably find other ways to make it work for us.
The dashboard that's been introduced just recently, that's been a really good thing. I actually set it up for our portfolio counsellor, so that now instead of him asking me, especially when we're going through the drought, he used to probably on a weekly basis ask me for water consumption figures for the week and where we're at. Now I've set it up so he can just log straight into the web browser, and it's daily updated. So he's all over it so he doesn’t even have to ask.
I'm a firm believer in the water and sewerage industry needed a voice. And ever since the Queensland water directorate have been involved, we've now got a voice. You know, we were the unknown factor, because all our assets are hidden and nobody, Nobody cares until you turn the water off. So, it's been a bonus for the water directorate to come on board for sure.
Our governance team is a small team. There's only two of us, and reporting is a big chunk of my role. We do a bit of everything. We have water, wastewater, recycled water and we report on everything across all the services.
We have used the data to look at mains breaks, for example, where we can pull that data from our SWIM™ and then go in and show them the comparisons over years, so we have been able to use the data for other departments or other areas of council as well.
Once you get your data, it's really easy because it's all there, clearly laid out. For data entry, it's just running through and entering the relevant information that needs to be done. You don't have to put all the data in all the time because the things that don't change remain the same, and that just carries across. So, SWIM™ cuts down on the time to enter the data. It's so convenient.
We've had David Scheltinga give us the training and if we've had any questions about SWIM™ or any issues, I've always found David to be really helpful and occasionally he's jumped on and had a look under my login so that he can see exactly what I'm seeing.
When you get all sorts of requests from various consultants, what we have been doing is giving them temporary access to the documents so that they can extract and manipulate the information as needed. It fosters a culture where data becomes important and capturing it also becomes very critical, and that helps with future decision making.
We obviously value having our data in a central portal because it makes life easier for everyone from planning to operations and you name it, you can access it from anywhere.
We set up waste colleagues to have access to swimlocal™, so they are entering all the solid waste quality data in there as well. The feedback on board was great, because it gives them a central portal with everything rather than having three different spreadsheets.
This is our first year with full subscription to swimlocal™, which has been absolutely brilliant. So far we have been looking to see what we can do in terms of automating some of our data, and then potentially moving to automate some of our compliance reporting.
swimlocal™ opened up a really big space for me to be able to run projects and improve the operational side of things to move towards the analytical phase of the data, rather than spending so much time in the data collation phase.
It has the potential to be a one stop shop for all of our regulatory reporting, and the new reports and dashboards tool is absolutely brilliant, it is my favourite thing right now.
We had spreadsheets upon spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, you know, that daily logs for each of the different treatment plants and things. So, SWIM has the capacity to make those null and void and literally be that one source of truth.
From our annual data, I created a dashboard with all of our key performance indicators for customer service standards to show how we've been trending for the last ten years. It provided a really good visual representation of how we've been performing and immediately, you can see where we can improve and what we're doing really well.
I can't imagine how much more time we have to spend, if on this 314 indicators, we then had to package it up, and send it to ABS and package it up, send it to BOM and package it up, Send it to RBNW, you know, that in itself is brilliant that we just put the data in, format, quality checks, and we publish it.
When the cells highlight yellow, or if it's an error, it’s visually easy to see, and you can search for a particular indicator really easily. The derived calculations are brilliant, as well. And then at the end, having those QA checks, really helps just to make sure that what we're reporting on is as accurate as we can possibly be.
Louise and David are just brilliant. Any questions I had, they were there, checking in seeing how we're going. Just really, really, solid experts to have available to assist. Absolutely brilliant service. I couldn't recommend it enough.
The Benchmarking Reports are great to compare us with similar sized cohorts. We can look at the similar service providers within our region that have similar weather impacts and topography and things like that, so that can play a part in the analysis, as well. I really love that format in the PowerPoint, there was some really helpful comparable indicators and I think I ended up asking Louise if she could also send us through a few other indicators that we have, within our customer service standards, just so that we could get a better impression on a few of those. She sent me through 10 years worth of data, so I was able to then use that to actually do a KPI performance report on ourselves, and take that to management, which I've now done using the reports and dashboards tool.
When the benchmarking report comes out each year, it’s fantastic. It goes up to management so they can actually see how we're tracking, how we can improve, and what we're doing really well. Because that's something I think a lot of people will probably find is, you spend so much time focusing on what you can do better and what you're not doing so well, that you often forget to go, hey, look how well we're doing, look at our progress over the last few years. So, it's really nice to be able to show management, and staff involved in the day to day, that what you're doing is making a difference. We love those reports. Please keep them coming.
For those considering swimlocal I would say, absolutely go for and get the full subscription just for the additional options that are available to you, which we didn't even realise existed. It helps with time efficiency, flag anomalies, it helps with data cleansing, highlight areas of concern that in such a big department can sometimes fall under the radar.
swimlocal™ is really, really affordable too. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and it's readily available. And the other thing is that it's being used by so many other service providers, that it has become the standard, and if you're not using it, well, how can you keep up? We want to be able to lead the way and take ourselves in a good direction, and I don't think we could do that as easily without having this tool to help us.
The definitions guide is like my Bible. When I'm talking to all the key stakeholders that report from different areas, we actually go out to them and physically go through the indicators with them to make sure that how we're collating that data and what we're reporting on aligns directly with those definitions.
At Logan, we use SWIM™ for entry of the annual regulatory reporting to DCA, Queensland Government, NPR, Bureau of meteorology, and ABS. I think the best part of that is doing one reporting process instead of a duplication across several different areas. It's really much more efficient, and a lot easier in combination with the alignment of the section seven of the urban water reporting.
The innate support we're getting from qldwater in terms of advocacy around the definition alignments really made it a lot easier for the utility, such as Logan Water, to get their regulatory information in one place. Everything we need legislatively is covered in one spot.
David has always provided support if required and gave great instruction on using the software. We haven't had any real significant issues installing the software, if there has been a question, we’ve always been given an answer or a solution to get that implemented. David has always provided the input on how other utilities have handled that indicator interpretation.
We have four treatment plants that reports to the BOM. Instead of having to fill out four separate parts of the report, SWIM™ uses the integration of the operation tool. It is quite a time saver and within Logan Water we can just click the contents of the spreadsheet and the SWIM™ process just integrates it volume information into the report. It covers all our requirements so you know, really helpful and quite a time saver.
I was thinking back to when I was at Banana Shire council, just having the operational tool, the operator checklist, we developed a mobile solution so that the operators could take a tablet with them to look at their data checklist, all those functional things that need to be done legislatively or just as good practice. Having the ability to assign those tasks and record when they were done for audit, or just general management, with the operational tool was really helpful. We didn't develop any report on that to say 13 out of 15 actions that haven't been completed, but that ability was there, should you want to do that.
The great thing about SWIM™ is probably just the convenience of having everything in one spot. And then the corresponding reporting and data management on the other end, for those operational parameters, is a great benefit.
The web tool is great. As an admin, I could assign people a web login and password, and they can enter their own data, if they wanted to. There they’ve got various areas in the business and maybe some visibility of the reporting through a web interface. So, the actual data that has been captured to give managers a view of what the indicators are, without necessarily being able to input them or do anything, to have a look at them.
The benchmarking reports are used quite a lot. We compare to our immediate utility and the SEQ region as a whole to check how Logan Water indicators changed over time, how we look in comparison to our SEQ neighbours, and probably a combination of both of those to see how have us and our neighbours changed over the last few years.
The benchmarking report is good, not too broad or general. It’s factual and fairly objective.
I just want to reiterate the responsiveness of David and his ability to provide support and even down to indicate a definition interpretation. And if he didn't know or wasn't sure he would find it and come back to you. As a huge bonus over recording time when things don't work, he's provided tools from the SWIM™ reporting repository on qldwater website. That's great. The greenhouse gas calculation. All that kind of stuff. Yeah, just having that central point where if you're not quite sure, you can go there. Hey, David, I've explored this. I've talked to someone from another council, but we're still not quite sure. And David will say, here’s a tool to get you going to get your report and that's great.
I've been using SWIM™ since 2014 it's really good just to have one place where you put everything. I remember when I was working at Beaudesert, we'd end up with heaps and heaps of different requests. Then I went to one of the first meetings for SWIM™, when they were saying that we're thinking about this database, and I was thinking bloody hell, what a good idea. So, I think it is a really good idea, because I remember what it was like before we had it. Now we just do that annual report and they take everything out the backend.
It's really good for us to have everything in one place. Just the other day, we were looking at something and we just jumped on to do a report and everything comes up.
And with the new dashboards, that's really good, too. I've used that a couple of times.
The main things for us is having everything in one spot, having one point of call for the state government and others to get our KPIs and everything out of.
When we do our annual report now, we've got all of our annual report data like table numbers set up and all I've got to do is open it because I set it up for last financial year. And everybody can do it now, because everyone knows where it is - you just open it plug those figures in. It makes any reporting a lot easier, and I find that we don't have as many mistakes.
When we got audited on our annual reports and what's in SWIM™, because we've got that all set up correctly, it’s accurate.
We also use swimlocal™ for all of the water quality data for the splash park.
We use the benchmarking reports to report to Council. None of us really want to raise the water price, because we all live here, but it is quite cheap compared to where we are and how expensive it is, so we lose money every year on supplying water to the towns. I did try over five years just to get a slight increase so that we were almost cutting even, but the counsellors wouldn't do it. But I do use those figures to say, look, this is how much it costs us to run a water service compared with all these other places.
The new graphs is probably something that we will use a bit more in the future. The other day, we were talking about chlorides at a Queensland Health event, and I could use the graphs off the dashboard to talk about that. It made a massive difference because numbers you know, sort of get lost but graphs are just so bang, you can see what's going on.
Signing up to swimlocal™ is definitely worth it. If you're considering it, just make sure you sit down, think about what you actually want to get out of it, and make it as neat and tidy as you can. It's a really good system, just have a good think about how you want to set it up.
I've been using SWIM™ and swimlocal™ for nearly six months. I used to do reporting with other utilities previously, so I think that SWIM has shortened those and have brought it to one place where we could put the data in, so it has made a lot of sense.
When we need some data about the consumption or what the previous years was, it's easy to get the data from the system. Apart from this, I've seen that David and Louise are very helpful, so I feel like the staff and setup and everything is good.
I’ve just recently used the new dashboard for our four-month report and the previous six month annual data as well. It's pretty easy to use and easy on the eyes.