28 minute read
Infrastructure end users | panel discussion
L–R: Brian Morris, Marco Assorati, Amy Brown, Natalie Malligan and Rosemary Sinclair AM
Infrastructure end users
Key points:
• End users should be a constant focus in decision-making. • Consumer expectations and levels of participation are changing rapidly. • Cross-sector collaboration through shared data is critical moving forward.
Panellists:
► Marco Assorati, Executive Director Asia Pacific, Salini Impregilo ► Amy Brown, Deputy Secretary, Strategy & Delivery, New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet ► Natalie Malligan, Head of Uber Elevate, Australia, ► Rosemary Sinclair AM, Chief Executive Officer, Energy Consumers Australia
Moderator:
► Brian Morris, Division Director, Macquarie Capital
Brian Morris (BM): Infrastructure end users are critically important. At the end of the day, they’re the people using and paying for the infrastructure we build. In my role at Macquarie Capital, I work with many large energy users, and Chair the Energy Users Association. I always remind participants that the end users are really the reason we’re in business.
Infrastructure assets have very long incubation periods and delivery time lines. We’re often making decisions and investments that our end users will have to live with and pay for over a long period of time. So, we need to make sure we get it right.
A major question in this space is always how we maintain a consistent focus on the end user. To start, can each panellist provide a brief comment on how expectations of consumers are changing across the sectors that they represent – transport, utilities and social infrastructure?
Rosemary Sinclair (RS): It’s not only the expectations of consumers that are changing in the energy sector, but it’s also their participation in the sector. Australia has one of the highest uptakes of solar on rooftops, and that is driving enormous change in our energy market. Consumers have jumped into this market for a range of reasons.
One reason is that the energy price outcomes over a decade have become unacceptable compared to income growth and the consumer price index.
The energy sector has a long and proud history of engineering, to which we added economics about 25 years ago. Now we’re in the middle of what is reasonably described as a revolution, where we’re adding consumer expectations to the mix.
When we think about energy infrastructure, we now must look at the hot water service, the air conditioner, the pool pump, the electric vehicle, the solar panels on the roof, and the battery in the garage. Our conception of infrastructure in the energy sector is changing dramatically.
BM: Natalie, you come from a very customer-centric organisation. How do you see the landscape changing?
Natalie Malligan (NM): Consumer expectations in the transport sector are changing in three key ways. The first is the desire for on-demand services. Uber was one of the first to offer the on-demand app experience. It’s now moving into the public transport sector, evidenced by the New South Wales Government’s trials for on-demand bus services, for example.
The second is the seamlessness of transport. Mobility as a service is becoming more prevalent, and it’s something that consumers are focused on. This means modes of transport being integrated so commuters don’t have to think about each individual part of their journey. For example, ‘I’m going to get an Uber to the train station, then I’m going to have to check the train timetable and work out what train I’m catching and how to pay for it’. Consumers expect that information to be available on one platform, creating a seamless transport experience across all modes and providers.
The third change is transparency. Consumers are no longer happy to stand at a bus stop and hope that a bus is going to turn up. With Uber, you can track where your ride is, how far away it is, and the route the driver’s taking. Consumers are now expecting this across all modes of transport. If you look on Google Maps in Sydney, for example, you can often see where your bus is or how full it is. People want their journey to be as seamless as possible.
BM: Amy, your customers are the people of New South Wales – how are their expectations changing?
Amy Brown (AB): Yes, I have a lot of customers. Citizens or customers are expecting more and more of government and of infrastructure than ever before. We’ve moved beyond the functional, where a school is there to keep the sun and rain off the kids as they learn their fractions, or where transport is just to get from A to B, to thinking about the role of infrastructure in our culture, behaviours and experiences. Schools are now expected to be the beating heart of the community. A metro ride is supposed to be ‘wonderful and magical’, and integrated station development is meant to have high amenity and even night-life.
I’m in charge of coordinating the New South Wales Government’s response to the parliamentary inquiry into the night-time economy. The principle behind that is moving from the dangers of a drinking culture into something more positive and productive, focusing on the economic benefits that come from Sydney having a night-time economy. This places pressure on the role of infrastructure. It involves transport, including Uber and the light rail to move people around and get them home safely. It involves public space, retail space, art spaces, museums or art galleries being available during the day, and by night transforming into small bars and other licensed premises. One issue for us is when we don’t engage with our users or our customers properly; for example, the ‘lockout laws’. When we get it wrong, government certainly pays for that.
BM: What is your perspective on changing customer expectations in the construction space?
Marco Assorati (MA): Constructors have always been far away from the end users. It’s not like that anymore. There is a lot of participation and integration in the process of thinking, developing, designing and delivering infrastructure – so it is critical for us to understand the needs of end users.
The real challenge is in delivering infrastructure that is futureproof and adaptable to the needs of the current generation, and the generations to come. For example, for me it is important to have parking spaces, but my son may need drone paths, and my grandson may need something completely different. We need to be able to deliver infrastructure that can be transformed and adapted to suit the needs of generations that aren’t alive yet.
BM: Amy, you work in a customer segment that has a different customer relationship and a diverse customer base. What do your customers look like?
AB: The word ‘customer’ in and of itself implies that we care what they think. The New South Wales Government has made significant inroads in terms of gathering information and listening to our customers who are well-informed, engaged users with high levels of advocacy. But who are we not surveying, and who are we not listening to? How do we engage with customers who don’t have advocates? Those people with complex needs and vulnerabilities who can’t tell us what they think because they’re homeless, kids, or one of 13,700 people sitting in our prisons. These customers have more touchpoints with government than anyone, but we don’t ask them how we can improve our services. You’ve got to think outside the box when it comes to customers.
I’m also coordinating an inquiry into the ice epidemic. The biggest issue with drug and alcohol treatment isn’t those customers in metro areas within 10 kilometres of services; it’s those in regional and remote communities.
The question becomes, how do we reinvent infrastructure to get services to them? Is it online? Is it digital? If they’re travelling through our prison system, how do we make sure that our services travel with them? That’s some of the ‘out of the box’ thinking I do in my role. If we don’t do that, we’ll just keep surveying people who are already well-represented.
BM: And you’ve got many touchpoints with your customers – one person could be dealing with multiple departments. How do you manage that, and who’s ultimately responsible for them?
AB: I think when people have particularly complex needs, then they’re individuals who need bespoke service solutions. We really need to stop and think through what it is they need, and work with them. They’re usually not people who are likely to reach out for access to services.
BM: Natalie, Uber has very close proximity to its customers and understands them well. Is that what’s behind Uber’s ability to innovate and stay ahead of changing expectations?
NM: There’s a few different aspects to that. We have data coming out of our ears, and so many channels through which we obtain feedback from riders and our driver partners. The challenge is, how do you turn that into something meaningful? How do you inspire your staff to do something about it? There are numerous things we’ve done that have really driven change in this space.
The first is one of the metrics that we call a ‘magic trip’. So, we can pull out the relevant metrics and ask, what does a ‘magic trip’ look like for our customers? It means your car showing up in a short amount of time and when we said it would show up. It means not having to walk a long way to find your car. It means that you rated your driver partner highly and there were no complaints.
We’re feeding different data points into a bigger metric that means something to our staff. What are the biggest reasons people are not having ‘magic trips’? How do we fix that? If you look at it in aggregate, you can start to see the patterns.
The second is inspiring staff to be customer-obsessed. There are many ways to do this; one is to use the technology. All our staff are users of Uber. Everyone gets credits every month to use Uber so they can experience what our customers experience and provide feedback. When a staff member uses the Uber app, they can report any issues directly to the engineering team. Instead of just forgetting about it, we’re making it easy for staff by having a direct line.
We’re also making sure they’re close to the front line – getting staff into our driver service centres to understand the experience so they’re not just looking at numbers on a screen. We also have an employee driver program to help employees to understand what our drivers experience. These are important ways that we maintain proximity to our customer to keep our finger on the pulse.
BM: Rosemary, what does a ‘magic experience’ for an electricity consumer look like?
RS: I’ve been thinking of all the opportunities in the energy sector for consumer-focused experiences around interaction. This is an important trajectory of change in the energy sector.
Historically, the energy sector has been one-way traffic with consumers treated as passive elements at the end of it. Consumers come to the energy sector often with experience from Uber and Airbnb, where they are used to trading their assets into a market to generate income. For example, the front seat of their car for 20 minutes – that’s what Uber offers
L–R: Amy Brown and Natalie Malligan
L–R: Natalie Malligan and Rosemary Sinclair AM
consumers. It gives them that platform as a car owner or driver. Then, consumers come to the energy sector with these expectations of creating value in their own assets, and they meet a sector that’s not ready. That’s where a lot of work needs to be done in terms of information and communications to allow consumers to participate.
BM: Marco, how are you connecting with your customers and understanding their preferences? What’s your model for doing that?
MA: The construction sector is not as close to the customer as other services are. But the way that infrastructure is delivered now has reduced the gap, and there is much more collaboration. We also receive data from customers through front-end services. For example, data from Uber can be used by constructors to understand how to better develop infrastructure.
Salini Impregilo is currently building a bridge and planning to use sensors that will not only give us information about the traffic, but also help us to understand how the structure is behaving so we are able to repair it or rectify it as we go. It also gives us some insights when building future bridges. Data is central to the way we build and deliver infrastructure, and it helps us to be closer to our customers.
BM: We’re in this digital world where consumers who have access to real-time information now have a lot of power, and it’s easier for consumers to share their preferences on what they like and what they don’t like. What are the consequences of that in each of your industries?
MA: We can’t ignore end users. Infrastructure that does not consider the needs of the end user is failing. Consumers are central to what all of us in this industry do.
BM: How does this new power that consumers have change the government’s view?
AB: I’m wondering how much power and influence our average farmer feels that they have right now. Not all infrastructure users have power and influence.
For example, there are some school canteens, mostly in lower socio-economic areas, that do not have the facility standards to get a licence to serve fresh food. So, what are the users of the canteens, mostly kids who are at risk of poor health outcomes, going to be able to do about that?
Or consider prisons. Currently, there are 300 children in detention in New South Wales correctional facilities – half of whom are on remand. That means they haven’t been convicted of anything. But we put them there because we believe that there’s nowhere safe for them to go. It’s a strange way to solve that problem.
The outcome of this is that they assert their power and influence by climbing up on the roof of correctional facilities. When I speak to the correctional officers, all the barbed wire, curved roofs and infrastructure solutions aren’t as effective as
what the correctional officers usually end up doing – having a sausage sizzle. It makes them climb down from the roof a lot earlier, right? Did we think to ask that question, or did we just deploy some over-the-top infrastructure solution? I don’t know the answer to that. What I’m saying is that we assume we know the answers, but often we’re not actually asking the right questions of the right people.
BM: Natalie, your perspective?
NM: Obviously as a commercial operation, the customer has all the power. That’s something that Uber has always been focused on. But Uber is a two-sided marketplace, so we can’t just focus on our riders; we have to focus on our driver partners, as well.
That’s a lesson that Uber has learnt along the way. But we know now that you must keep your customer front of mind on both sides in the marketplace, or your commercial operation will suffer.
BM: Rosemary, from an energy perspective, how are you seeing it play out? What are the pitfalls if we start to ignore the power of the consumer?
RS: In the energy sector, there’s no going back. There is now huge political risk that’s been created in not meeting consumer expectations. The result of this, unfortunately, is this playing out in a series of relatively uncoordinated interventions in the market, which create further uncertainty and difficulty.
The challenge is in transitioning away from a very small number of large things, mostly in remote places, to a very large number of small things much closer to the customer. So, the customer is exercising power by buying technology, and by making their views known politically in terms of prices – and that’s not going to change.
We’re about to see the introduction of the consumer data right in energy, which will give further power to the consumer regarding choice. We’re starting to see a response from industry to those consumer pressures. The sector got together and established an extremely interesting initiative called the
L–R: Brian Morris, Marco Assorati, Amy Brown, Natalie Malligan and Rosemary Sinclair AM
Energy Charter. The early signs are promising, as we’re getting indications that it is refocusing the whole sector on outcomes for consumers, and that’s a very good thing.
BM: We all know that the rooftop solar revolution is taking place at rapid pace – we’re roughly installing the size of a Liddell Power Station every year in terms of capacity across the nation. What do you think are the experiences in energy that other infrastructure sectors could learn from?
RS: There are two main lessons. The first is in how we got here, which was through a very difficult and disconnected policy context. Energy is a reserved power for state governments under the Constitution, but the international treaties power, the interstate commerce power and the corporations power are constitutionally federal powers.
This leads to a messy policy context resulting in there being no long-term coordinated vision for a sector that enables important outcomes, like comfortable homes and competitive businesses. This messiness occurred at the same time technology changed profoundly. This has meant that costs have come down, and barriers to access and installation have been reduced, which has enabled an opportunity for consumers.
Secondly, what we’ve learnt is that consumers see value where others might not, and that’s a key lesson for other infrastructure sectors. There’s significant change in terms of consumer and community attitudes to infrastructure.
For the last 40 years in energy, we’ve used economic models that are terrific in many senses, but they’ve taken people in the direction of user preferences and individual utility user-pays, but along the way we’ve lost the notion of the value of shared assets.
For example, the value of electricity networks is a big discussion topic for the community. The network is not close enough to me as a consumer to be getting any value, and if I put solar panels on my roof and I’m generating my own electricity, then why should I be paying for that great big grid over there? There are some lessons out of that in terms of creating value for individual consumers.
BM: We do need to talk about data – we’re all flooded with data. I know this is something you’re passionate about, Amy.
AB: I have at my disposal the New South Wales Their Futures Matter (TFM) Human Services Data Set, which draws together service usage of 2.3 million children and young people born after 1990. It includes every government service that they’ve used, including welfare at the state and Commonwealth level. The data shows some interesting things – seven per cent of that cohort uses 50 per cent of the services. The most vulnerable cohort will cost us about $2.3 million over the course of their lives.
We can use this data powerfully. It enables us to do things like detect vulnerability at birth using an algorithm. We do this by using indicators that are associative and that correlate to risk at birth. This includes things such as whether the mother smoked while she was pregnant, whether she was Indigenous, whether the family’s in public housing, whether the timing of the first antenatal appointment was after 16 weeks of being pregnant, and whether a parent had to access drug and alcohol services or mental health services. We can predict the likelihood, based
on certain indicators, that a kid will end up at risk of significant harm or worse.
The question then becomes, what do we do with that? Sit in the ethical discomfort of that. It is critical that we have an open conversation with the community about what we can and should do with their data.
For instance, you and I are comfortable signing up to Facebook or a credit card, knowing that things might happen to our data and we accept that. But what about facial recognition of kids as they walk into school so we know they got there safely? What about facial recognition of everyone in the CBD to try and mitigate terrorist activity? What about linking the fact that a mum must go to a healthcare appointment as a result of domestic violence to her child, so it’s on their record forever? These are the types of uncomfortable questions that we need to work through as we get more and more powerful data sets.
BM: You’ve touched on an interesting topic there – the trade-off between using data for good, while protecting the consumer rights. That must be something Uber comes up against every day.
NM: We obviously must be very cautious. Everything we analyse we try to do anonymously. We have strict protections around who can access what and how data is stored.
The biggest challenge the transport sector is facing going forward as we move more and more to mobility as a service is how we share data while protecting privacy. If we’re linking modes of transport, we need to be linking private and public data. Governments are already heading down that path. For instance, Transport for NSW has an open-data policy, which is helpful for integration, but there are challenges. It’s going to take strong partnerships between government and the private sector to work out how to do this in a way that protects privacy while the data is still useful.
BM: How comfortable are energy consumers with having their data shared?
RS: There’s been a big focus on this through regarding consumer data rights in energy, and people are becoming aware of the issues with energy data, but the value of it is very significant.
The data being collected needs to be sifted and analysed, because there are very significant uses in informing system-level decisions. In the energy sector, we’re just beginning to understand the nexus between the data that we need and the data that we have. The energy sector has a history of resolving whatever the problem is by building a lot more capacity that consumers just pay for. Right now, consumers are saying, ‘We’ve had enough of that approach, we want you to analyse and think about that data, and be much more careful about where those dollars are spent’.
BM: How do you see the future trends in your industry developing?
RS: I think there are three vectors, if you like. The energy sector is going from a mass approach to consumers to an individual approach. We’re moving from large passive technologies to more modular and consumer-based technologies, and we’re going from a command and control mindset to more competition and more choice for consumers.
NM: If we think about end users being more involved, where people are becoming the providers themselves, we need to double down on how we create new regulatory environments to enable that. For instance, the future of work – how do we allow for that flexibility of people being able to work when they want and be an independent contractor, but at the same time have the protections that they need? The future of work will be a very important focus over the next few years.
AB: For us, it’s working out for citizens their touchpoints with government, and how we can get as many positive interagency services at that touchpoint to improve their lives.
MA: From a constructor’s perspective, historically we have not used enough available data. This is something that is changing. We need to consider how we can shape the future in a flexible and futureproof way by utilising that data.
Marco Assorati – Executive Director Asia Pacific, Salini Impreglio
Marco Assorati is Operations Regional Director, South East Asia and Oceania, and is in charge of projects and development in the region, residing in Sydney, Australia, since June 2015. With over 20 years’ experience, and as a qualified civil engineer, Mr Assorati has undertaken roles varying from Company Director and General Operations Manager, managing concurrent multimillion-dollar projects in Nigeria and Ethiopia, to Delivery, Business Development and Tendering activities in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia and, most recently, D&C metro train line, bridging, tunnelling and stations across Australia.
Amy Brown – Deputy Secretary, Strategy and Delivery, New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet
Amy Brown is Deputy Secretary and head of the Strategy and Delivery group at the New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet – a group formed to provide expert commercial, strategic and economic advice to the Premier on major and complex whole-of-government policies, programs and projects. Ms Brown is passionate about delivering real outcomes that improve quality of life, provide access to opportunities for individuals and deliver value for taxpayers.
Prior to joining the Department, Ms Brown was a Partner in the Sydney office of PwC’s Infrastructure and Urban Renewal Business, with a practice that focused on social infrastructure and housing. She’s also worked in infrastructure finance at the New South Wales Treasury, and as an infrastructure lawyer in a number of top-tier law firms.
Natalie Malligan – Head of Uber Elevate, Australia
Natalie Malligan was recently appointed as the Head of Uber Elevate for Australia, where she is responsible for making Uber’s ambitious urban aviation plans a reality. She previously worked in Uber’s ridesharing business as the Head of Cities for Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to joining Uber, Ms Malligan was a Manager in Bain and Company’s Private Equity practice in San Francisco and Sydney. She holds a combined Bachelor of Commerce and Laws from the University of Sydney, and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University in New York.
Brian Morris – Division Director, Macquarie Capital
Brian Morris is part of Macquarie Capital’s Australian Infrastructure and Energy Team, based in Melbourne. Mr Morris has 30 years’ experience within the energy sector, and has extensive energy market origination and energy trading experience, including renewable Power Purchase Agreements (PPA). Mr Morris has a deep understanding of energy financial markets, and has worked with large energy users on financial and physical grid connections and behind-the-meter energy management solutions.
Prior to joining Macquarie, Mr Morris worked at Schneider for seven years, where he led the Energy and Sustainability Services business in Australia, a diverse and profitable team of 75 staff focused on improving the sustainability and energy productivity of commercial and industrial sector clients.
Mr Morris was a Founder and Director of Creative Energy Solutions from 2003 to 2010, the first specialist energy adviser to be awarded an Australian Financial Services License. Mr Morris currently sits on the Board and is Chairman for the Energy Users Association of Australia.
Rosemary Sinclair AM – Chief Executive Officer, Energy Consumers Australia
Rosemary Sinclair is the CEO of Energy Consumers Australia, a company established in 2015 by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council of Ministers to strengthen independent consumer advocacy on national energy market matters of strategic importance and material consequence for energy consumers, in particular household and small business consumers.
Energy Consumers Australia focuses on the long-term interests of consumers of energy with respect to the price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply of energy services. Ms Sinclair is a Director of CPA Australia and a recent past Member (part-time) of the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Ms Sinclair has many years of senior large-scale operations, communications and strategy experience in business and government across telecommunications, media and education.
Ms Sinclair has held a number of Directorships on unlisted company and notfor-profit Boards, both in Australia and internationally.
Ms Sinclair received the Order of Australia Award in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Ms Sinclair has degrees in Arts, Law and Business, and holds a Master of Commerce from the University of New South Wales. Ms Sinclair is a qualified CPA and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
WaterNSW planning for the future
With regional New South Wales facing one of the worst droughts on record, public attention has turned to infrastructure solutions to improve water security. Whether it’s new dams, more pipelines, or resurrecting the 1930s Bradfield Scheme, there has been no shortage of ‘silver bullet’ ideas to drought-proof inland communities.
While this debate is welcome, every good water supply planner knows that it’s better to plan before, rather than during, a crisis.
When WaterNSW was created four years ago as the state’s new bulk water provider and infrastructure authority, one of its key tasks was to develop a strategic framework to guide infrastructure investment – something that had been missing in New South Wales since the 1970s.
After two years of work and customer consultation, WaterNSW released the 20 Year Infrastructure Options Study (rural valleys) last year. This filled the void in long-term strategic planning, and provided exciting opportunities to identify and address customer needs in rural areas and across town water supply, agriculture, and environmental sectors.
WaterNSW assessed hundreds of potential options in the regulated river catchments across rural New South
Blowering spillway Wales, incorporating agricultural trends, population changes, climate variability and demand fluctuations. It then identified the gaps in meeting the future state expected by its customers and their communities.
Preferred options were identified to address these future gaps, which invariably focused on improving water availability, drought resilience, flexibility in river operations, and community and environmental outcomes. Options included new and augmented dams, regulators (gated weirs), pipeline networks, and more innovative solutions, such as managed aquifer recharge projects and underground dams.
We all know that the Murray–Darling Basin has a cap on extraction. Our thinking is focused on making the available water last longer and on finding ways to ‘add more taps’ to the basin. That may include inter-basin transfers to better manage flooding and to bring new water into the basin – without impacting coastal environments.
Although many of the larger infrastructure projects have long lead times and may not provide shortterm benefits during this drought, it is important to continue this work so they’re in place for the next drought.
We also need to have a more meaningful conversation about how we value and use water in our regional and urban environments. Greater leadership and focus are required to reduce our demand and move away from a ‘single use of water’ mindset.
Andrew George, Executive Manager Water Solutions and Market Strategy, WaterNSW
Addressing our supply gaps must be balanced with doing more on water conservation and efficiency.
Water policy and planning is complex, particularly in the Murray–Darling Basin. There is a proliferation of agencies and organisations, both public and private, that have a role to play in setting policy and planning solutions. In that crowded landscape, there’s a lot of competition to promote good ideas, obtain government support and then secure what’s available of limited funding to undertake the studies required to prove project feasibility, and then, separately, construction.
The solutions and investment required to make the step change improvement in our water security and livability requires political and bureaucratic courage. As an industry, we have the solutions. There is no doubt that some are costly. But when governments are pouring billions of dollars into road and rail projects, one has to ask what value and priority we really place on our precious water resources and regional communities. ♦
Improving the availability of water resources that are essential to the people of NSW.
We are a state-owned corporation with our own enabling legislation and board of directors. Our responsibilities include: • Source water protection • Bulk water supply • System operations • Infrastructure planning, delivery and operation
• Customer water transaction and information services
Our assets include 42 dams, hundreds of weirs, regulators, pipelines, and the largest surface and groundwater monitoring network in Australia.
As Australia’s largest water supplier, we oversee infrastructure projects, innovation and investments that improve the availability of water for the people of NSW. Some of our recent and planned works include:
• Wentworth to Broken Hill pipeline: We recently completed a 270 km pipeline with a $500 million investment strategy, to provide long-term water security for Broken Hill. • Keepit Dam post tensioning: one of the largest post tensioning anchor projects in Australia to improve dam safety compliance. • Warragamba Dam raising: a project to complete the detailed concept design and Environmental Impact Statement to raise the dam by about 14 metres for flood mitigation capability.
WaterNSW has developed a 20 Year Infrastructure Options Study (rural valleys),which provides a strategic assessment of potential infrastructure options to meet level of service issues in our regulated valleys.
The study provides planning context for our long-term operation and future development of regulated bulk water supply infrastructure. It continues to be developed with customer input, technical assessment and cost-benefit analysis.
Find out more and access the study at waternsw.com.au/20YIOS.
WaterNSW is playing a vital role in extending the supply of water for critical human needs during the worst drought on record in parts of NSW.
Building upon our ground-breaking long term 20 year IOS, our preparation for intensified drought impacts in the coming summer season includes dedicating increasing resources to deliver on a range of emergency infrastructure projects.
These projects aim to extend water supplies for as long as possible for communities and land-holders in the worst-affected regions of NSW, whilst building resilience for those communities in future droughts.
