Transcript
Klaus Nannestad
Welcome to Talking Water with GMW. This month we are joined by Goulburn Murray Water Field Services Manager Tony Corbett. Tony talks about GMW’s extensive winter works program, including the various maintenance and repair works involved and how these works will improve GMW’s delivery network. We release new episodes each month, so be sure to check back in for more.
Ivy Jensen
Well, thanks again, Tony, for joining us. So I'm actually really interested to hear a bit about your background and how you came to be GMW. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Tony Corbett
When I was much younger I did civil engineering at uni and that gave me the opportunity to work in the water sector initially, and I've sort of been passionate about water and water infrastructure and such matters all through my career, and I've essentially stayed in that field that nine years ago get the opportunity to take a job with Goulburn Murray Water.
I spent a a bit of time on the project delivery side of things, particularly related to project works up at the storages and I got the opportunity a couple of years ago to move across to the group that focuses more on our irrigation networks and head up the field services group that within our infrastructure division, and largely conducts the construction and maintenance ongoing activities across the irrigation network.
Ivy Jensen
Yeah, we’re Australia's largest rural water corporation, with an irrigation network that spans across a huge area. So how challenging is that?
Tony Corbett
Well, there's a wide geographic area to cover and a lot of different project works are developed. So it's a concerted effort between planning staff who have a look into the asset management and the condition of existing assets which have been around for decades and are 60 year old or even longer in some cases.
It means there's deterioration and a need to upgrade a lot of assets. So it's a continuing challenge and a moving feast, if you like.
Scheduling works across anywhere from essentially the Shepparton/Tatura region right through to Mildura and address our priority refurbishment works, if you like, as well as some capital upgrade works.
Ivy Jensen
And you've really got to squeeze a lot of that into those three months of the winter season. How do you go about doing that?
Tony Corbett
Fortunately, I suppose from our forefathers from a forward planning perspective built in this agreed window from mid-May through to mid-August where it's not expected, we have any obligations to supply water and we get the opportunity to shut down the network and undertake the critical maintenance and refurbishment work that you can't do within the channels while they live and supplying water to our customers for the balance of the nine months of the year.
So it's a good opportunity and we take a number of months really to forward plan these works and schedule demand and particularly works on structures such as bridges or underground crossings, on the railway lines on our channel network. We need to have detailed design and tendering processes planned out months ahead. So if we can't do the works internally, we might engage some experienced contractors to assist us with that.
Ivy Jensen
But you need a fair bit of lead time to plan that out. So when do you start planning for winter works?
Tony Corbett
I’d probably say it’s continuous as soon as the last week to works are completed. So probably from September onwards we're looking at the portfolio of works that are coming up for next year.
Ivy Jensen
Oh wow. Tell me a bit about what's involved in this year's program.
Tony Corbett
We'll look at a number of types of improvement works. There's a couple of major channel refurbishment projects being undertaken. We're also looking at undertaking the sort of maintenance activities such as weed treatment within the channels.
Weeds tend to grow across our channel network, aquatic weeds that can block up the channels and we can also have a build-up of silt just through the material that forage down the channels over time.
And these can block the channels and make it difficult to deliver the demands to our customers, the flows that the water they need during the irrigation season. So we have a program of weed treatment to undertake in the channels across the winter period, also some removal of silt from channels, but we also have some major upgrades to bridges that need to be replaced that cross our channels.
And we have responsibility for structures such as those underground crossings. We have a couple of major crossings that we need to bore underneath the railway line to replace the existing channels deteriorated. We have some works on our regulating guides that control the flow down our channels, something on the order of 30, I think, regulator gates are going to be swapped out this winter when we can get access to them.
We have regulator gates that have been recycled almost. Some are being reused, but they've been refurbished and can be retained into the channel system. We've also got some work, so what we call out node towers, which are part of our SCADA network. So they’re basically on relay stations for radio and so forth: part of our telemetry network that transfer data from our field site, our water levels and our regulator gate positions.
And we operate a SCADA network that allows us to, if you like, see the status of the system from the office and make changes to the setting as well, remotely automated facilities and so forth.
Ivy Jensen
So you would have seen quite a few technology changes over the years, wouldn't you?
Tony Corbett
Well, I think SCADA and telemetry has been around for a while across various industries, but I think one of the features for Goulburn Murray Water is the extensive geographic distances involved.
So we have towers that relay information spanning hundreds of kilometers. And you know, there was a modernization program going back a couple of decades that commenced to bring in that sort of automated technology, particularly to control our flows and our channel levels and so forth, makes things a lot easier. The staff.
Ivy Jensen
Okay. So how many staff are actually going to be deployed during the Winter Works program?
Tony Corbett
Something in the order of 60 and some of those across all of the groups as well as mine, then we have a construction train that is something on the order of 20 or 30 staff involved there in delivering upgrade works. And we have a similar number, maintenance staff who will concentrate on the weed control program and other more maintenance orientated tasks.
And we also have our Project Delivery Group involved in two major channel refurbishment works that amount to about value of three and a half million dollars and that will be contract works issued to a couple of regional contractors to do a significant upgrade to our Murray Valley and our Western Waranga channels. So the two more intensive, larger upgrades that we've planned out for this winter and it's good to see that we've been able to undertake those works and utilise the regional contractors in our area, provide the work, if you like, outside of GMW.
Ivy Jensen
Yeah. Keeping the jobs local and employing local is great. Will customers be able to see or notice a big difference in the water delivery with these channel embankment projects?
Tony Corbett
I think it's a continuous process of making sure we can supply water. Because our network is so large it might be any individuals may not notice the effect of that. But it's all about that ability to make sure we can get water through at periods of high demand, which I think with recent climatic conditions or weather conditions over the past six months, we haven't been under a lot of pressure with high demands to our customers.
But I think that could ramp up after winter again. And like most years, our networks are under a fair bit of pressure to deliver water and it's crucial. Yeah, and it's essential works to maintain that ability to supply water.
Ivy Jensen
Yeah. Is there anything that customers and the general public should be aware of while you're doing all these works?
Tony Corbett
Yeah, I think that most are generally aware of our shutdown period, but specifically our weed control program, we’ve notified customers who are on those systems, that water will definitely not be available. They can't use the water. Should there be any remnant water in those channels, because we do lower the water or dewater them to assist with the herbicide treatment that will undertake. Domestic and so forth, customers wanting to have a supply through that period, but they'll be notified directly as well.
So they need to take note of those restrictions during the winter works period.