municipalities to provide direct feedback to our Executive Management Team on what is working and how we can better serve our client communities. Likewise, our Operations and Business Development teams in the field meet regularly with clients to understand what issues they are facing with respect to their local water and wastewater systems and determine how OCWA could help them respond to the issues.
MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR AND CEO 2019 was another successful year for OCWA, with the Agency achieving all of the key goals set out in its three-year business plan and long-term strategic plan.
OCWA’s continued strong financial performance has enabled the Agency to invest in programs like our Business Transformation Program, which will provide OCWA employees with information technology tools and other supports to do their jobs more efficiently and better support the Agency’s clients, and our Asset Stewardship Quality Management System, which enables us to help clients develop comprehensive asset management plans for their water and wastewater systems. These programs and others are helping to expand OCWA’s value to clients well beyond the delivery of operations and maintenance services.
OCWA’s vision is to be “a trusted world leader in water” with a mission to demonstrate service excellence through the delivery of safe, reliable and cost-effective clean water. Throughout this report you will read about some of the initiatives included in the Agency’s strategic plan that are helping us to achieve these goals. The Agency maintained its history of strong financial performance, with total revenues continuing to increase year over year. By focusing on delivering excellent client service, we were able to increase our annual revenue from $205 million in 2018 to $213.6 million in 2019 and exceed our net income target by 12.5% ($9.6 million as compared to a plan of $8.53 million).
Other key areas of focus include improving the efficiency of our business processes, supporting the Province and the public, and ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees. Throughout 2019 we made significant progress in all of these areas. In keeping with our commitment to provide a safe, healthy, respectful and representative workforce for our employees, we enhanced our health and safety program, developed a long-term Diversity and Inclusion strategy that will be implemented in the coming years, and provided First Nations cultural safety training to staff from across the organization.
In addition to meeting our revenue and net income targets for the year, we successfully retained all but two small client contracts up for renewal in 2019, including one of our largest clients, the Region of Waterloo. We also welcomed a number of new clients to the Agency and expanded the scope of services that we provide to many of our existing clients. Much of our success comes from understanding our clients’ needs and finding solutions to address their concerns. Forums like our Client Advisory Board provide an opportunity for decision makers in client
We also made continued improvements in the way that we manage the procurements of
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