NMC worked with Coffs Harbour City Council to develop a prioritised workforce plan to sustain Water and Wastewater services through a $300 million capital works schedule.
Coffs Harbour City Council had a significant capital works schedule on the horizon, alongside rising service demand across its Water and Wastewater operations. The Council wanted to build a workforce model that was resilient, cost-effective and future-ready, one that could sustain service delivery while making the best use of both internal staff and external resources. It also needed to assess different delivery options for the upcoming capital works program, to make sure the right workforce structure was in place to deliver it.
NMC began by evaluating the maturity of Coffs Harbour’s Water and Wastewater team across attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining staff. Staff engagement was a priority throughout, with one-on-one consultations held with key stakeholders and multiple workshops run with field staff. NMC wanted the challenges and opportunities to come directly from the people living them every day, not just from the data. Once a prioritised list of challenges had been developed across the four workforce pillars, NMC benchmarked other local water authorities to understand how they’d addressed similar issues. An option analysis was also carried out to evaluate different workforce delivery models for the capital works schedule ahead.
