The recent lockdown in New Zealand has been a game changer in terms of how we do business both as organisations and as people. The solution has come in finding smarter ways to work with the tools we have and I am pleased that Water NZ has fully embraced this with some excellent webinars. My own organisation, Watercare Services Ltd, has been active with videos from the Chief Exec, daily Teams updates and even virtual coffee breaks and this has made a tremendous difference to staff, connecting us all and keeping business running.

In short, we have all finally caught up with the technology we have and have adapted our businesses to work smarter in this time of crisis. Financially and environmentally this has also had a positive impact and that is something we must not ignore.

One of the things we must all do is figure how we can keep the momentum going and in the Backflow Group we are looking at how we can better assist the wider Backflow Community by using these newly embraced tools. Though we have conducted some meetings via video conference already, some of the suggestions have been recording these meetings to make them available for members, offering virtual advice and educational webinars for territorial authorities (this will be especially critical with the introduction of the new Water Services Regulator Bill) and even taking a look at how training a person to test and maintain backflow devices can be at least partially completed using an online course.

We should all make use of these tools to improve how we work and educate because we’ll never get a more receptive time than this.