WMA is composed of a number of different organisations who worked together under the Water Matters umbrella to complete $100M of infrastructure upgrades between 2006 and 2008.
The partners included Abigroup Contractors, Aquatec Maxcon, Water and Wastewater (Townsville City Council), GHD Pty Ltd and United Group Infrastructure.
WMA is a one-project company with objectives that see all participants focused on the project outcome, not their own company outcome.
An Alliance "culture" was developed that encouraged trust and open communication. A particular focus for the team alignment was instilling a "no-blame, fix it first, best-for-project" attitude.
Why an Alliance?
The benefit of having an alliance is the ability to bring the most experienced people from each organisation to produce the best outcomes for a particular project. The alliance is able to work openly and directly with the client, developing a long-lasting trust as well as keeping the community involved.
Delivering experience in civil construction, Abigroup brought robust cost planning and estimating protocols to the alliance resulting in exceptional levels of financial predictability.
Aquatec Maxcon provided the mechanical equipment to the wastewater treatment plants.
United Group Infrastructure bought expertise in engineering, project management and project supervision and provided resources for installation of the electrical services.
With their high level of proficiency as designers, GHD provided the design and documentation for the various projects with specialist experience in the delivery of membrane bioreactors/treatment processes.
The Alliance Team
From its inception, the Water Matters Alliance team developed and worked to a clear vision of delivering for the community outstanding water reuse facilities for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area by creating a team culture that delivers and promotes sustainability through innovation and collaboration.
Three of the four commercial parties had just completed a similar alliance together and brought forward the established culture and nucleus of the WMA team. UGI, already one of Australia's most experienced alliance contractors, was able to slot into this established base and add their reinforcement.
One ingredient of a successful alliance is gaining and understanding the rules of the "collaborative" contracting before the alliance commences, and the attention of a core team was focussed on the best structure and staffing for the alliance and its base business model before the team was commissioned to ensure that organisations and personnel were selected for their fit to this vision. As the alliance matured and the scope of works became better understood, the team worked to modify its base structure to better match changing circumstances rather than working with outmoded models which would not have provided best fit for the program.
The benefit of this approach was demonstrated in the stability of the WMA team. Even though we operate in a remote area and are a small program in global terms, WMA attracted and kept great people for the three years of the program. A solid core of people at all levels and in areas of WMA joined and stayed for the entire journey, providing a human framework on which to build positive culture.
This solid core of culture, along with achievable relationship objectives, helped newcomers fit in and get up to speed quickly, as well as creating a harmonious working environment. WMA mandated a structured Issues Resolution process, but it was not activated during our journey.
Our strong "no blame - find it and fix it" culture culture was driven bottom-up by the entire team and helped ensure that both rational risks and successes were shared by all within the team, and progressively with suppliers and peers.
Early on, it was also obvious that the team did not accept "business as usual" as acceptable practice. BAU, statutory requirements and our KPIs provided the base from which to the team stretched to achieve better outcomes and processes.
This cultural approach allowed us to work with a very flat structure which encouraged effective teamwork. Largely autonomous and self-managed task teams took ownership of their project environments and got things done, seeking and providing input to other teams as necessary - all supported by a central and representative APMT with frequent "all comers" workshops. This encouraged sub-contractors, suppliers and even work experience people to speak up and receive a supportive hearing. WMA provided an open and flexible forum where different disciplines could discuss aspects of the project and hence share a greater understanding to ensure that sustainability and innovation was built in to everything we did, not bolted on as afterthoughts.
This cross pollination extended to early involvement of major sub-contractors and suppliers as subject matter experts in the design and specification processes to increase information flow and understanding of the projects. Client involvement was active at all levels of management and delivery, from a strong Alliance Leadership Group (ALG) presence to embedment of operators in the Target Out turn Cost (TOC), Risk and Opportunity (R&O), design and construction processes.
Highlights for the team:
- Completed $109m of works across 22 separate packages including 3 Wastewater Treatment Facility (WTF), pressure and gravity sewers, underground HV power, high capacity effluent and potable reticulation in 11 mainland and island locations
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Built one of the world's biggest Membrane Bioreactor WTF on time, on TOC, and already exceeding performance KPI on commissioning
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Meeting and beating the critical effluent quality and stringent EPA licence requirements to enhance the environmental performance of the Townsville community - already resulting in awards for Horseshoe Bay WTF, and lining up for awards for Cleveland Bay WTF
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Made Magnetic Island one of Queensland's first "zero outfall" communities, with all effluent recycled for civic reuse
- Culture of safe behaviour kept us all going home with just 37 Reportable Safety Incidents recorded over three years and 22 sometimes remote sites
- Achieved the stakeholder relations performance KPI for Magnetic Island with only three complaints being received
- Benchmarked as conducting the best government stakeholder communication program in the Asia Pacific region