Empowering Our People
Competition by Comparison
The benchmarking of Queensland’s water and sewerage data allows competition by comparison and is nationally and internationally accepted as the best tool to improve the water and sewage industry.
Each year Service Providers (SPs) must collate and supply significant volumes of data on water and sewerage services to numerous State and Commonwealth agencies.
The Statewide Water Information Management (SWIM) project was created in 2006 to simplify reporting of up to 900+ indicators reported by some Queensland SPs. Today, thanks to the SWIM system, swimlocal and data translation tools require the reporting of only around 200 indicators in total which are then passed on to State and Commonwealth agencies in specified formats.
SWIM has been developed in stages. The SWIMonline pilot with small and medium councils for the 2007-8 reporting year received a strong response and in the 2008-9 year more than 80% of providers used SWIM to accomplish their water and sewerage reporting requirements. Today, all Queensland Water Service Providers report using SWIM and the quality assurance of data is greater than ever before.
The success of SWIM is critical to consistent and transparent reporting for the Queensland water industry which is being assessed by its ability to provide data in an accurate and timely manner. SWIM has evolved from a reporting process to a tool with a clear focus on business planning, giving SPs comparative and benchmarking data as well as responding to ongoing and ad hoc data requests from a variety of organisations (such as Government agencies, researchers and consultants).
Queensland’s 13th water and sewerage benchmarking report using 2022/23 data is available from the links below.
Following positive feedback from members, the report is published as a package that includes two sets of slides formatted for display with charts for all water reporting entities separated into (1) medium, large and extra-large service providers (>1,000 connections), and (2) small and indigenous service providers. The package includes a document providing explanatory notes and additional insights that should be read in conjunction with the charts. The slide deck and explanatory report contains a suite of indicators and benchmarking data for all 72 of Queensland’s council owned urban water/sewerage utilities.
Please download all three documents for the complete package.
State Benchmarking Report 2022-23 Explanatory Notes - Release Date 05-Jan-2024: - Explanatory notes for the 13th annual Urban Potable Water and Sewerage Benchmarking Report using data captured and reported to the Department of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water (RDMW).
State Benchmarking Report 2022-23 MLXL - Release Date 05-Jan-2024: - 2022-23 Benchmarking Report for Medium, Large and Extra Large Service Providers
State Benchmarking Report 2022-23 SIND - Release Date 05-Jan-2024: - 2022-23 State Benchmarking Report for Small and Indigenous service providers
This was the ninth year Service Providers in the State reported via the Key Performance Indicators Reporting Framework.
The benchmarking of Queensland’s water and sewerage data allows competition by comparison and is nationally and internationally accepted as the best tool to improve the water and sewage industry.
Reporting on performance is essential for water utilities, which are natural monopolies, to provide surety and transparency to consumers as well as to satisfy regulatory requirements and allow benchmarking and competition by comparison.
All service providers report to the Regulator and provide annual reports and Council reports. Reporting on specified water and performance indicators is also required under legislation by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Meteorology and the National Water Accounting Framework.
In Queensland, all larger (>10,000 connections) Service Providers are required to report through the National Performance Reporting (NPR) framework (which is not available to smaller utilities).
A collective approach to managing and distributing water performance indicators was commenced by qldwater in 2008 through the SWIM program.
SWIM was developed by qldwater, on behalf of Water Service Providers, to simplify the task of water data reporting. With your support and use of SWIM, we can continue to encourage government water data reporting to be rationalised and streamlined. We urge you to submit your annual water data through swimlocal on time so that its future as a water-industry-driven system is assured.