Transcript
Chloe Warburton
Welcome to Talking Water with GMW where we discuss all things water.
My name is Chloe Warburton and I'm a senior communications and engagement officer at Golden Murray Water.
In this episode, we're joined by our General Manager Infrastructure Delivery Services, Warren Jose, our Manager, Project Delivery Aaron Walker and our Manager Field Services, Tony Corbett, who take us through our winter works program for 2024.
We have episodes on a range of topics on our website or wherever you get your podcasts, so be sure to check them out after this one.
Chloe Warburton
We're here with three members of our Infrastructure Delivery Services team to talk about our Winter Works program. Can you just introduce yourselves first?
Warren Jose
Morning Chloe. My name's Warren Jose, General Manager Infrastructure Delivery Services. And we've got Tony and Aaron joining us today as well.
Tony Corbett
Yeah, I'm Tony Corbett, I'm the manager of Field Services within Warren's infrastructure Delivery group, and we primarily deliver maintenance and construction on the irrigation network for Goulburn Murray Water. So we have quite a lot of work coming up for the Winter Work period.
Aaron Walker
And I'm Aaron Walker, responsible for essentially major projects within Goulburn Murray Water.
Chloe Warburton
Fantastic. So tell us about our Winter works program. What is it and why is it so important to Goulburn Murray Water?
Warren Jose
Yeah, this is my 10th Winter Works program. It's a program of intensive construction and maintenance activities undertaken when the irrigation system is off for the three-month period during winter, and this year, we're looking to invest around $10 million across the 13 weeks across major construction, which Aaron will talk about shortly, and minor works and construction activities that Tony will chat about.
We're utilising our internal team, so there'll be 50-60 people involved, plus contractors, another 50 or 60, so well over 100 staff and a workforce really driving delivery of $10 million through 13 weeks. So if you think you need a week or so to dry in the system and then a week to fill it, it's almost spending of $1 million a week for those 10 to 11 weeks in between.
But I'll hand over to Aaron first up, just to give a highlight of some of his major projects.
Aaron Walker
Essentially, we have a continuation of the works program last year. So up in the Loddon Valley last year we initiated a desilting program and an expansion or widening of the channel there as well.
And essentially we got through a portion of it last Winter Works and we're going to restart that this Winter Works with the conclusion. So between two regular points adjacent to the Dingee School, for those who know what that is.
We'll essentially make sure that we've desilted and reprofiled that channel. It's the same contractor that use last, Northern Construction out of Echuca..
That's three construction teams active on that site, in terms of excavators and other equipment, bulldozers and whatnot. That job specifically on the ground will be roughly six weeks worth of work.
Chloe Warburton
And what type of planning is involved ahead of the Winter Works program? You know, ten weeks of work, it must not be a simple thing to plan.
Tony Corbett
Essentially, it's a long term view through our planning group, as well as looking at the condition of our assets and identifying parts of the system that have undergone deterioration.
Also, because, you know, some of those assets are well over 50 years old, and construction standards with concrete and so forth, going back a long period in time, there is a lot and also earthen banks and so forth can deteriorate over the decades. So we also have monitoring of our channels we'll undertake to establish if we have any deficiencies in the ability to deliver that flow capacity we need to put down our channels to meet our customer needs.
So we can use our SCADA monitoring system to detect whether or not we're having any, if you like, pain points throughout our channel delivery system, and this can target certain areas of the channels might be suffering from weed build up or silt build up. And so those areas get pointed out as the priority areas say, you know, the next year or so and then coming into winter, the, the, the sections of channels we're going to tackle to try and remove these problems in the network.
Warren Jose
To further add to that, our Strategy and Service Planning teams undertake routine planning throughout the year to help build our program, and we would typically look at analysing the program in the December, January, February period and work hard with the Water Delivery staff to actually then plan the on grand works, which Tony just talked about. So it's a long term planning activity of many months before we actually get to today and start site work.
So this is a routine cycle for GMW and in essence, we do commence the planning pretty much the moment the system restarts in August. So for major scale works that we might be tendering, that's some of the works that Aaron is managing, we would be going out to tender in August, September, October for a start in May. So it's an annual cycle. it really doesn't stop but here we are, this is a really intense constructing period.
Aaron Walker
Just another point to add on to that, the stakeholder involvement in terms of adjacent land specifically. So if I refer to the the desilting package, although the local community is well aware of what occurred last year in the region, we go through the same due diligence to back up Warren and Tony's point in terms of communication with adjacent landholders very early in the piece, so they're well aware of what's coming, even though that might not impact the community as such but definitely people that are adjacent with property, that actually comes into some unique cases, like I mentioned before, that in terms of the Dingee School, basically we're working adjacent to the school. So we've highlighted to that group in terms of our intentions and hope to make something of that in terms of greater engagement with the community in that instance.
Tony Corbett
I'd agree with that. We do have to do a lot of consultation with landowners and users adjacent to our works. We're bringing plant onto site and so forth, so we want to do that in a fashion that doesn't interrupt landowners too much. And we can agree access points and lie down areas and all those types of practical things.
For site works, we have six construction crews doing a nine upgrade works, and they'll do a range of structure refurbishments as well as channel bank refurbishments. So that total of between 6 and 8 construction crews supported by contractors, particularly the hire of additional major plant to work on site.
We also have maintenance crews undertaking weed treatment programs in winter to try and kill off areas of the channels that have had significant growth of weeds, and so that runs to several crews across our three east, west and central operating regions. And between those teams that could run to at least 50 personnel, both between our construction and our maintenance teams working on the Winter Works program. And on top of that, we have a few projects that we've packaged up together and put out to the contracting market to get specialist services in from contractors who are experienced in things like pipe jacking on the railway lines.
We have a number of sites where we have to replace the channel section that are buried under the crossing of the railway line, so they're a culvert, and we bring in specialist contractors and utilise their resources on top of their own teams' resources to complete those types of projects.
Chloe Warburton
Excellent. What are some of the larger projects that will be delivered during the program? Like, I know we're doing some work on the Waranga Western Channel and we've got some works on the to Torrumbarry Number Three channel near Cohuna. Can you expand on those projects a bit more?
Tony Corbett
Yeah, I thought I might highlight the Torrumbarry Number Three channel right through the township of Cohuna. This has taken a lot of planning because we know are community impacts there.
But basically the channel over a significant section such as a kilometer has suffered a lot of build up of silt over time. So we had a lot of tree growth through the channel banks, and these trees have placed the integrity of the channel at risk. They were also at risk of falling down in a popular community area, so we've had expert arborists and so forth come and review the status of the trees and so forth through that area, and we formulated - we need to rework and rebuild the channel bank through town, and we need to remove certain trees that are a risk.
So that's a project that's involved community consultation in Cohuna, with a couple of letter drops, and also open day sessions at the community house there to allow people to come and visit and talk to our project manager about what works are coming up there so we could understand better the community impacts of the works, and how to work around with the community to achieve the outcome.
Works will be starting in June basically, and could run for 6 or 8 weeks across winter. So that will be a high profile one for us, right In the township of Cohuna.
Chloe Warburton
Excellent. In terms of, you know, obviously the Winter Works projects benefit our irrigators because we do the works to make our system run more efficiently so we can deliver water and so on. But you were just speaking about the township there and we'll have a high profile there during those weeks of work. What other benefits are there to the community - we use local contractors, all of that kind of stuff and economic benefits. Can you take us through that a little bit?
Warren Jose
During our Winter Works, with the intense working period and increased amount of staff, then indeed we do utilise a lot of local services. So if you think about service stations, bakeries, general stores, anything our staff need during the works, that's our high expenditure period, and the businesses do benefit from that locally.
To our earlier point, we utilise regional contractors where we can. They are best placed to assist us. They are most experienced on our network and typically this winter, the majority of contractors or subcontractors we're using are regionally based, so they live and work in the region, we're busy employing them, they're either working, as Tony and Aaron talked about on large projects independently for us, or they're part of Tony's constructing teams and they're engaged as part of the team.
So they come in, they join the construction teams, and they perform a role. So there's wide-ranging benefits to the communities and the people who live in them during these winter period.
So of the 10 million that we invest, it could be in the order of 2, 3, 4 million that's invested either in businesses and or local contractors on the way through.
Aaron Walker
I think it's a great opportunity for GMW to leverage the community from that, in terms of the contractors. We see, GMW has been around for many years in different forms, but when we've gone through cycles of connection with the amount of money that's been spent in general, it's the same contractors and specifically the personnel that work for those contractors that have been in many of the projects in the past.
So it's a great opportunity, specifically for our team to actually leverage other people within the community who have a great knowledge of the network to carry on to Warren's point.
Chloe Warburton
Is there anything for the public to be aware of during the program? Like we'll be out and about of course, and we're placing a big emphasis on the safety of our staff, so what should people be on the lookout for, things like change traffic conditions at some sites?
Warren Jose
Most definitely Chloe, throughout the winter period, obviously the days are shorter, and the works are continuing right through the day. So I'd be asking if communities just to keep an eye out for the construction signs and just to keep an eye on the changed traffic conditions as well.
It will be very obvious. Their safety plans are very contemporary and we'll have traffic management where we need it, so the signs will be very obvious, but we just ask the communities, just keep an eye on where we're working, adhere to the rules as they go past and we'll try and make it as safe and as efficient as we can.
Chloe Warburton
I think that's just about it. If people want to find out more information, they can go to our website. We'll have a section on our website there with an interactive map of the works that are happening at the time. And we'll also be posting regularly on our social media as well, so keep an eye on that.