Challenge

Mobilising a new water contract during the arrival of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred required rapid adjustments to ensure safety and continuity of critical infrastructure. The team had to balance immediate weather-related demands with long-term contract goals.

Solution

Ventia's team quickly adapted by leveraging detailed planning, risk assessment, and strong collaboration with Seqwater. This approach ensured a seamless transition despite the challenging conditions.

Impact

The successful mobilisation strengthened team relationships and ensured continuous operation of critical infrastructure. This earned high customer satisfaction and demonstrated Ventia's resilience and commitment.

Mobilising a new water contract is a critical phase that sets the foundation for efficient service delivery, and long-term operational success.

It’s a challenging undertaking, requiring a structured approach, including detailed planning, risk assessment, resource allocation, and stakeholder engagement.

So, when your mobilisation coincides with an ex-Tropical Cyclone then it’s sure to test even the most robust of mobilisation plans. 

In 2024, Ventia was awarded a new four-year contract by Seqwater to deliver preventative, corrective and reactive maintenance for their electrical, mechanical and instrumental assets across its water network. 

The transition kicked off in September 2024, and our team officially went live on the new contract on March 3 of this year, just three days ahead of the predicted arrival of then Tropical Cyclone Alfred. 

“It presented us with some challenges but also accelerated the development of relationships between our team members and the customer,” said Contract Director Michelle Heinz when asked about how the team adjusted to the weather event during their first week. 

We certainly hit the ground running, finding ways to do things and we’ve taken a lot of learnings that will hopefully set us up for long term success.

Overall, the customer was very pleased with our willingness to respond.

This response included having people leave their own homes that were under threat to work alongside the Seqwater team, ensuring pump stations and other critical infrastructure could keep running.

“There were trades people who went and stayed on North Stradbroke Island and we had other people who stayed on Seqwater sites to be able to provide immediate response if a pump or generator went down.

There were a lot of people who really stepped up which included an element of personal sacrifice with their own house and families caught up in the event.

Members of that team were also called out for their commitment by the CEO of Seqwater. 

Asset management focus

Under the Seqwater Collaborative Asset Services (SCAS) contract, Ventia is providing services across 35 water treatment plants, 95 pump stations and 26 referable dams.

As the mobilisation kicked off and the cyclone approached, a steep learning curve to get to know the assets commenced.   

“The SCAS contract is designed to enable Seqwater and Ventia to work together seamlessly, leveraging our respective expertise and resources to achieve optimal asset maintenance outcomes,” Michelle said. 

The weather event has enabled us to garner some insights into the assets and we anticipate this will enable us to provide recommendations for asset upgrades to make them more robust in the face of future events.

Setting up for long term success

After such a dramatic start Michelle and the team are looking forward to getting back into the day to day of establishing the project for long term success.

“We can now concentrate on embedding our processes and procedures and continuing to deliver efficient and effective services to ensure we support Seqwater in their asset management journey, through rain, hail or shine,” Michelle said.