Alliances and Shared resources

Services have recognised that there are cost efficiencies in using construction staff to renew or construct water and sewer mains as well as construct or augment sewage pump stations. Day labour is used for longer mains and contractors are used for more complex projects such as treatment plant augmentation or construction.

Due to our distance from major capital cities, skilled private sector resources are less reliable due to the scale of our business, establishment costs and reliability of timely access to resources.

MidCoast Water services would typically contract out the following operations:

Operation:

 Minor operations such as lawn, weed control and ground maintenance  Billing  Operator training  Some meter replacement  Process audits and specialist advice

Maintenance:

 Asset inventory and condition surveys  Maintenance of major pumps  General maintenance contracts for the supply of labour and plant for both civil and electrical  Some pipeline cleaning and flushing  Cleaning of reservoirs  Rehabilitation of pipelines  Business enterprise system maintenance

Capital works:

 Specialist engineering for process and environmental studies on major projects  Detail design and contract documentation on major projects  Construction of major projects

Workforce:

 Specialist consultants for Water Service business systems development, management and audit

Alliances and Shared resources

MidCoast Water Services undertakes regional procurement resources with other Council water utilities through Hunter Councils and also partners in training and staff development with other regional water utilities.

MidCoast Water Services is a member of the NSW Water Directorate, an industry association of NSW regional water utilities formed in 1998 to address a need to cooperate on common water policy and technical challenges in NSW.