Sydney Water Planning PartnerLong term planning and investment to secure future water supply

This is an imaginative, innovative and forward-looking partnership, helping Sydney Water to transform its project delivery operating models, sustain its ageing infrastructure assets and introduce new technologies.

The partnership has formed a truly integrated planning function, bringing the right mix of capability to co-create projects and deliver plans successfully.

It simplifies the water infrastructure supply chain and delivers significant benefits to Sydney Water as an organisation, to its customers and to its partners, through increased efficiency, cost savings, continuity of work, resource availability and partner capability by incentivising high performance and increasing productivity.

Given the decade-long term of the contract, this is a once-in-a-generation change that will create an enduring water sector legacy for Sydney Water, its customers and the industry.

Planning sustaining capital

The partnership is successfully enhancing Sydney Water’s agility and flexibility to deliver its capital pipeline, by planning for major asset renewals and augmentations, as well as new infrastructure development.

Through asset strategy, planning and engineering, our focus is on sustaining Sydney Water’s assets and sustaining and improving the services Sydney Water provides to its customers.

The planning for renewal of aged assets will optimise investments in a smart way that maximises how Sydney Water operates, maintains, and optimises the performance of existing assets over their useful life.

Asset reliability, resilience and return on investment is being analysed and planned through a continuous feedback loop that connects investments with operational outcomes and corporate strategy.

Projects delivered so far include planning and early design of the Upper South Creek Advanced Water Recycling Centre and Malabar Wastewater System Plan, both supporting the population and economic growth of Greater Sydney with expanded water treatment capacity.

Sydney Water adopted its partners as part of the team, really embracing the one team approach. It is driving a culture of creating value, based on the understanding that you are embraced as one team but also expected to contribute as one team.

This consistency of people on projects, and consistency of relationship between partners within the supply chain is bringing about efficiencies. An overarching principle is that it is essential to have a common set of behaviours and a culture, which, together, defines how the partnership functions.

Enhancing the digital experience

A focus in the Sydney Water Strategy 2020-2030 is enhancing the digital experience for the benefit of people, assets, customers and the city. This focus has driven the partnership’s adoption of industry-first technologies, such as development of a Geospatial Planning Tool.

It uses spatial analysis and in-built planning logic to automatically produce baseline integrated water servicing concepts, growth forecasts, asset sizing and cost estimation.

Another digital success has been the Wet Weather Overflow Abatement Program, which includes the inspection of wastewater assets and development of a digital platform that geographically plots the performance, condition and location of each asset. Armed with geo-linked digital asset data, the programme is successfully supporting the roll out of water infrastructure asset repairs and replacements across the Greater Sydney area.

The benefits are improvements to the way that asset renewal and maintenance is planned, budgeted and delivered, which ultimately benefits Sydney Water’s customers and the environment.