‘Best for Waipa’ - Delivering the 2012-2015 LTP – A Legacy for the Future

During early 2012 the Waipa District Council approved a large increase in their Long Term Plan (LTP) spend on Water Services to increase the level of service provided across the three waters, to improve resilience in their operations and to cater for future growth. Prior to this the council had a modest spend, and did not have the level of skilled resource to deliver the much larger capital works programme.

This paper describes the steps which were taken to deliver the first three year (2012-2015) of the long term plan. These steps included appropriate ‘Best for Waipa’ resourcing using a blend of in house and consultant resources, the establishment of processes for managing programme and project risk and the procurement of project management services, consultant and contractors. As part of this process tools were developed to track and encourage innovation, to ensure that appropriate review and escalation methods were available and that monthly cash flow spend was appropriately monitored.

The paper also describes the governance and management process which were developed to support the larger programme and how these processes were also used within other functional areas of Council.

Use will be made of a case study, including planning, design and construction of the Frontier Road Reservoir. The 6ML reservoir increases the water storage to 24 hours for the residents and the industrial users of water in Te Awamutu to demonstrate the effectiveness of these processes.

The paper describes lessons learnt from this exercise across the programme and will also describe how the legacy of the first three years of the 2012-2015 is being used for the 2015-2025 long term plan, which has a project capital expenditure of $473M, a proportional doubling of the 2012-2015 spend.