3. G-MW – owner organisation Transfield Services – a supplier of maintenance services and capital works projects (gas & power industry typically) Sinclair Knight Merz – an engineering and project delivery firm Comdain – construction, project maintenance and operations management Sub contractors * PLUM Communication – communication and stakeholder * URS Who is the Alliance
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6. A quantum leap forward Above: From this – a manually operated Drop bar Right: To this – automated FlumeGates
16. Our meters matrix model 1. Initial contact 2. Meter Selection 3. Offer Signed 4. Construction program organised 5. Construction 6. Commission 7. Post Works
One of the really important issue for the client, was customer satisfaction. This is a drought depressed region that is experiencing a lot of issues and change. From water trading to low water allocations. Farmers were tired, overwhelmed by information and in some cases hostile to change. Hence customer satisfaction and reputation management was a very important part of the project for GMW. And they did something quite unusual. The ALT was made up of a member of each participant, but they also invited myself on the ALT. I had been a member of an AMT before, with the West Gate Bridge Strengthening Alliance, and felt quite honoured to be asked to join the ALT. The reason why I was asked, is because the client wanted someone on the ALT who had expertise in reputation management and customer consultation.....and who wouldn’t lose sight of the end user. We’ve seen a great turnaround in support for customer consultation in the project....and as a result the ALT, AMT - right through to construction crews - have really understood their role in customer satisfaction and embraced the customer all through the journey.
G-MW is the largest rural water authority in Australia. Interesting to note that even though it’s a large water authority it’s annual capital works program is generally $10 million so it’s a massive leap when the capital works program jumps to around $150 million a year. This work was spread across 1000s of individual sites - hard to show the geographical spread in this presentation. Engineers Australia said that this project set new industry benchmarks of what could be achieved during an irrigation shutdown season - this reflects the fact that we set up the alliance in six weeks and then began a three month construction period installing 1516 FlumeGates, 100 water meters, lined 27 kilometers of channel and installed six new node towers.
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625 staff - a lot of internal communications. Important to alliancing - 80 per cent of alliances reportedly fail because of people. Community - Few things you might not know about Shepparton. It is the safest Liberal Party seat in Australia, has Victoria’s largest Indigenous population and was where Richard Pratt’s family first started the cardboard making empire - fruit boxes for the fruit industry. We largely dealt with three types of opposition - political opposition(the area and surrounds are largely national and liberal party strongholds), philosophical opposition (people not wanting water to go back to Melbourne but not totally against the idea of the irrigation upgrade) and reluctant to change opposition (farmers not wanting to change their water management. Some of this was due to suspicion the new equipment wouldn’t work, others were happy that the old meters .... and the list could go on) There’s no doubt the community wasn’t 100 per cent behind the project when we arrived. One of our executive team members had his coffee spat in when he told the local barista that he was working on the water project. There’s also a funny story about a four year old who asked his mum where the puddle of water had gone the day after it had rained. She tried to explain evapouration but he said .. No mum it’s gone to melbourne. We also had to remember farmers had had it tough for years … and had to change their practices enormously to adapt to climate change, massive fluctuations in food prices not to mention 12 years of drought.
Our customer and consultation strategy resulted in a 99.7% customer approval rate for the works to take place on their property… The big benefit was smoothing the way for the works crew. We learnt early on that the happier the construction teams were the happy everyone else in the alliance, and our customers, would be. Our team contacted more than 2500 customers for all aspects of our works – with an average of 5 contacts per customer, that’s more than 12500 contacts made by our team throughout the project. All our works were completed on time, to budget. We have won an excellence award for the Victorian Division of Engineers Australia for our work. We’ve received much positive media coverage about our works with minimal negative media coverage.
There has been an evolution in the role of communication in alliancing. Three years ago when we started on Westgate Bridge it was being valued for having a strategic and key role in project success. And as for the Value for Money argument. We see our real value for money being in things such as no disruption to the work, high customer satisfaction survey results... and having helped create a strong team culture. Internally....At every opportunity we pushed key messages about customer interaction. There was even a presentation on the importance of the customer included in our induction program. Lesson is make sure everyone of the team understands what may be required to make comms work. Ie the delivery manager needs to understand that when the govt wants a media event it needs to happen even if it’s going to hold up work!
Biggest media issue was the channel lining. Community member and environmentalist lived by one of the channels we lined in plastic, wrote a stream of letters to the editor, engaged the local MP and we had a long battle on our hands. Her concerns were about wildlife drowning in the channel. Our approach was to meet with her face to face, take the project manager of plastic lining to discuss her concerns and we also spoke to another project team in QLD to see if there was anything we could improve on which we did by moving the escape mats closer.
When we hit Shepparton at the beginnign of 2008....these images were plastered everywhere. The merchandising was imperssive, and the PLUG the Pipe group had extensive voice in the region. Through a myth-busting, factual, consistent, grass roots, campaign we were over time able to turn the community sentiment around to support the modernisation works. We were able to demonstrate that the benefits far outweighed the scare campaign that was being run by a few passionate people.
COST effectiveness....value for money etc....big focus. Really focused locally. Kept track of what we spent so we could put a dollar figure on what our project meant to the region (just under 70 per cent spent on local suppliers, products for entire project). Good to keep regional development minister happy. Our logo cost $300 and was designed locally. Team involved in chosing the logo and even the uniforms. Our CCOs were joined with CCOs and other staff from G-MW. We made them all one team and included everyone in the initial training. 85 per cent retention rate throughout the whole project which is great considering we had tough deadlines to meet.
Can’t stress the importance of having a good database to record all your customer interactions and complaints. We built ours from scratch - amazingly complex as we needed it to take live data from the client and perform lots of other amazing feats. Complaint handling throughout the project met our KPI requirement. Response within 24 hours. Most common complaint was fences cut and gates left open. This let to some of our most challenging moments with customers as donkeys got into a pony enclosure and other animals went walkabout. But although there were some funny incidents it was a massive OHS issue as a wandering cow on the road could be a death trap. We used toolbox sessions and wrote to subcontractors explaining the issue and the complaints and then told them how this impacted on the success of the alliance. Complaints about fences and gates started to go down. These small things are very important to the farmer. This is their home. Their livelihood. Their world. And we ... are intruders.
Lesson learnt here is that the customer likes to take a bit of time between being provided with his/her meter selection and signing the offer. Our CCOs had to work hard to get these over the line so our work crews could get started on time. The other interesting point to make is that post works customers still have issues. We are currently demobilising the project which finishes the construction end of December. However, four CCOs and a manager will stay on to ensure customer issues are wrapped up and that the handover back to the client is completed. It’s all about leaving the most powerful legacy behind …. A happy customer.
Tested the customer communication materials we produced early on with local irrigators. We wanted to make sure we spoke to them in a way they liked and understood. Through this we learnt to write in farmer language, to use a bigger font for many of our audience was aged over 50 and wore glasses. And never, ever under any circumstances did we produce glossy publications (a bloody waste of tax payers money!!) Our tours were a big hit. If you have a project that is new make sure you get people out on site. We also set up what we called the war room at the alliance office. It had a map with pins on it (hence the name war room) showing every site we’d put a new irrigation asset in. The room was also decorated with great photos of the project making it the ideal spot to entertain visitors and we had heaps of them coming through. Another tip is make sure you train up a few people who can talk to visitors or present …. That will save your alliance manager or whoever else has become your project’s pin up. Questions are a big part of any project and we were constantly scripting up answers, getting them checked and then sent out. I believe this played a huge part in winning over the community.
Had his way with many cows – heffers. Not supposed to be pregnant to this rough and ready bull – being preserved for a princely bull that had to arrive. The owners’ plans went out the window so they demanded compensation. Paid for vet to arrive and prevent any unwanted pregnancy. .
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