Water Skills Forum 2023

Josh Tickell, Manager Technical Advisory and Training and Melissa Wortman, Senior Adviser Skills, Training and Workforce Development at the NSW Department of Planning and Environment presented on the Town Water Risk Reduction Program (TWWRP), it’s progress and outcomes to date and next steps ahead.

Queensland shares a lot of similarities with NSW in the way that water services are provided by a large number of small and/or poorly resourced service providers.

In September 2022 the NSW Government partnered with NSW local water utilities and the wider water sector to implement the TWRRP to strengthen risk management and strategic planning in town water systems to better safeguard public and environmental health in regional NSW communities.

A key component of the program is a water industry skills and training action plan to address a critical shortage of formally trained water operators in NSW. This shortage increases the risk of water quality safety incidents, which in turn puts public and environmental health at increased risk, increases the risk of water service delivery failure and creates organisational liabilities for water utilities.

To better understand water operator employment and training issues, the department commissioned Balmoral Group Australia (BGA) to analyse the NSW water operations workforce and its access to training, resulting in the NSW water operations workforce and training analysis report and subsequently the Water operations skills and training action plan.

Dr Marty Hancock, Research Manager at Water Research Australia presented on the findings and progress of the Operations and Operator benchmarking project being delivered by Veolia Water Technologies.

The main purpose of the project is to bring industry and regulators together, to develop minimum standards (a benchmark) for technical competency that facilitates a more consistent approach towards technical competency and the implementation of Learning and Development (L&D) programs for frontline water industry operations.

George Wall, Managing Director at the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia (WIOA) presented on the benefits of the Acuario platform which can aid visibility of workforce planning and skills training gap analysis.

George has had a long history in the training space including being Chair of the national Water Industry Reference Committee, the group that manages the National Water Training Package, and a strong advocate and driver of Operator Certification (now Registration) schemes in both Victoria and nationally.

Operator Registration provides an assurance to regulators, communities and the users of drinking water and recycled water that Operators are competent to manage drinking water, wastewater and/or recycled water quality, as well as being capable of identifying and responding to drinking water, wastewater and/or recycled water quality risks and incidents. There is a lot of detail that sits behind registration assessments which resulted in the investment by WIOA in developing the custom-built Acuario system to track the whole process.