New WSAA Board Member Raveen Jaduram spoke to WSAA about Watercare's 40/20/20 initiative to reduce embedded carbon, cost of work and number of workplace injuries.
Transcript
So at the moment, Watercare is involved in a number of initiatives. The first one is what we refer to as 40/20/20, and basically we've said that by 2024, so the next five years, we want to reduce the embedded carbon in the infrastructure that we build by 40%. We want to reduce the cost of doing the work by 20%, and we want to reduce the number of injuries that our workers are subjected to by 20% every year. So that's 40/20/20. We don't know whether we can achieve that, but that's what we are aspiring to do.
One of the things we're doing to achieve that, is we are changing the way in which we are going to procure about $2.4 billion worth of our capital investment over the next 10 years. So we have decided to implement what we refer to as an enterprise model. What that is, is we're going to choose two contractors who will do the work over the 10 years. They guaranteed the pipeline of work, and in return they have to deliver 40/20/20, and a few other things. So the enterprise model is quite unique to us, to New Zealand, and maybe to the world.
Thirdly, because there's reform being talked about in New Zealand, Waikato's District Council, which is a neighbouring council, has decided that it would like Watercare to provide the three water services to the residents of Waikato for the next 30 years. We signed up to that agreement, and we are going to commence that operation on the 1st of October this year. That's quite a challenge. They've already banked $28 million of savings, which we have to deliver. Plus, we need to have a return, because the people of Auckland will not be subsidising Waikato.
Finally, we've got this very large project, the Central Interceptor, which is building 15 kilometres of five metre diameter tunnel that will take combined sewers out of Auckland and reduce wastewater overflows by 80%. So that is a five-year project, $1 billion, and we're very involved in that.
25 Nov 2019
