Towards Operational Excellence: TasWater's Transformation with Brendan Windmeyer

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15 minute podcast, in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders from around the globe.
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Brendan Windmeyer, General Manager for Operations at TasWater.
[00:00:18] Piers Clark: Brendan, brilliant to be connected with you.
[00:00:20] Brendan Windmeyer: Thanks very much for having me, Piers.
[00:00:22] Piers Clark: Now, our topic today, and this is the second in a series of three podcasts where we're talking to people from TasWater, is all about the transformation that you've been leading at TasWater, taking this rather staid government utility into one of the leading operationally efficient utilities in the world.
[00:00:41] Piers Clark: But before we get to that, let's learn a little bit more about your background, Brendan. So, tell me, how did you get into the position you're in now? What were you doing beforehand?
[00:00:50] Brendan Windmeyer: My most recent role before this role was in a regional water utility, Barwon Water, where I led up a subsidiary company called Barwon Asset Solutions which did maintenance.
[00:01:01] Brendan Windmeyer: Previously, I worked in the private sector running a contract for a water utility. And then prior to that I used to be the safety guy. So, I've sort of evolved from being the safety person into an operations person and just loved getting things done. I think the things that I'm most proud of is being a person that focuses on safety, inclusion, and accountability with care.
[00:01:20] Piers Clark: I would argue that if you're going to be the General Manager of Operations, having a strong safety background and an understanding of contracting feels like it's pretty important.
[00:01:30] Piers Clark: Now, this is the second of three podcasts on TasWater, but just in case people haven't listened to the previous ones, can you just tell me in 30 seconds, what does TasWater do? Where is it? Its core activities?
[00:01:43] Brendan Windmeyer: So TasWater is the utility or the water provider to Tasmania. We have about 550,000 customers.
[00:01:51] Brendan Windmeyer: We have the unenviable stat of having about 2% of Australia's population. About 38% of sewer treatment plants across the country of the top 16 utilities, so we've got lots of assets. And we provide services across the state in a geographically dispersed area. So, very challenging but an amazing place to work and provide service to our customers.
[00:02:12] Piers Clark: I've been to Tasmania a few times, and it feels a little bit like you go back in time. You go back to the sort of 1950s. It's got an, air of just how it used to be. Not that I was born in the 1950s, but that is my image of it
[00:02:26] Piers Clark: Now, is that a fair statement or tell me what was it like when you arrived at TasWater?
[00:02:33] Brendan Windmeyer: I arrived in September 2023, so a bit over two and a half years ago. When I arrived at TasWater, we have had some performance issues in terms of our safety and in our treatment plant's performance. So it was an exciting time to join because there was some opportunity to invest and look at how we're doing things across the organization.
[00:02:52] Piers Clark: Okay. So you've arrived at a water utility that's got some operational issues and some aging assets. And of course, as you say, 38% of Australia's assets yet only 2% of the population.
[00:03:04] Piers Clark: So what was the first thing in your list of priorities when you arrived? What were the things that were keeping you awake at night and have you been able to resolve them?
[00:03:13] Brendan Windmeyer: So I'd say that we haven't resolved everything, but I think that what we can show is a really strong transformation.
[00:03:19] Brendan Windmeyer: One of the things that I'm most proud of is our engagement of our employees. So, in the operations team there is about 380 people and we've now got an engagement score that's gone up by 18% in that time that I've been there in the two and a half years. So we are getting people that are more engaged and turning up safer.
[00:03:37] Brendan Windmeyer: So our safety stats have also gone from a total recordable injury frequency rate in the eighteens to just under five in the last two and a half years. And we've got a team that is now passionately trying to find efficiencies and looking for opportunities that I don't think that they were necessarily looking for when we started this journey.
[00:03:55] Piers Clark: How much of the team have you had to refresh?
[00:03:59] Brendan Windmeyer: We have, and I think that's part of my leadership, it is about accountability with care. And so there has been a shift in both the leadership team, but also addressing behaviors that haven't been addressed before. And really showing and leading that we can be different, introducing more diversity into the team.
[00:04:16] Brendan Windmeyer: So we have seen a bit of a turnover in the team. A bit over 10% over that 2 and a bit years and that has shifted the culture, I would say, in terms of people seeing the future for TasWater.
[00:04:28] Piers Clark: Well a country is generally led by the shadow of the leader, isn't it? It's the leader both from George as the Chief Executive and you as the General Manager, and you set the tone and hopefully people follow that.
[00:04:38] Piers Clark: And when you say diversity change, do you mean on gender? Do you mean on ethnicity? What do you mean on improving the diversity?
[00:04:46] Brendan Windmeyer: So specifically in operations, we've had a very low diversity representation. So women in ops we're about 7.5% when I joined in September 2023. We've gone up about 4% in that time. So it might not sound like much, but that's an extra 15, 16 women in operations that are out there doing field-based roles.
[00:05:06] Brendan Windmeyer: But I think it's how we've done that with the merit-based recruitment that we're actually getting better retention. So women were also leaving the organization at a faster rate. And now they're actually staying longer and getting invested in as well.
[00:05:19] Piers Clark: Well done. Okay, so the first platform you've been working on is getting the safety right, so everyone goes home with all the arms and legs that they arrived with. And then getting a culture where people are engaged and listening and learning and wanting to stay.
[00:05:35] Piers Clark: What about the actual operational statistics? How were things running and have you been able to address that?
[00:05:42] Brendan Windmeyer: Yeah, so with the reduction in some of our employee numbers, we've still seen an increase in customer KPIs ranging from six to 10% in our priority one response, but also our priority one rectification and through to priority ones, twos and threes, and also our sewer performance.
[00:06:00] Brendan Windmeyer: So, not only have we got people more engaged, being more commercially astute, but also, driving better customer outcomes and seeing customer complaints related to our water quality halve in the last 18 months as well.
[00:06:12] Piers Clark: Excellent. And the regulator relationship?
[00:06:16] Brendan Windmeyer: I think that that is probably one thing that TasWater had when I started, was actually quite a good relationship with our regulators in terms of Department of Health and the EPA.
[00:06:24] Brendan Windmeyer: However, I'd say that they can see we are continuing to strengthen our responses, and that's giving them more confidence to be able to have really frank and honest conversations about our performance, which means that ongoing trust is just growing, I think.
[00:06:37] Piers Clark: Excellent. I think it's probably worth taking a moment to go back a bit and talk about why you had the problems, why TasWater has this sort of disparate behaviors.
[00:06:48] Piers Clark: It's a structural thing, isn't it? It's about the history of where TasWater's come from. Can you touch on that?
[00:06:54] Brendan Windmeyer: Yeah, so TasWater, has historically started from 29 councils who are our owners, and continue to be our owners to today. And then we had three organizations that were formed to be able to address the issues. But then 11 years ago now, TasWater was formed which was sort of an amalgamation of 29 councils into three organizations, into one organization, which is TasWater.
[00:07:17] Brendan Windmeyer: And so for a long time, there was no idea that we were functioning as a statewide entity. And so a lot of the focus has been about operating as one team.
[00:07:26] Brendan Windmeyer: And that would be things like even only up until last year was there the first enterprise agreement that was statewide in our general agreement. Previously, it had been three separate agreements that meant that people had different conditions and different ways of working across the state.
[00:07:41] Piers Clark: Now the way you tell the story is it makes it sound like it's all been swimmingly perfect. You've sort of solved all the problems.
[00:07:48] Piers Clark: Now which are the next tranche of challenges that you are focusing your brain on?
[00:07:53] Brendan Windmeyer: So we have 167 water plants and sewer treatment plants. They are still aging and so we still have very high break rates in our water network. We've addressed some of our safety performance, but I think that we still live with an idea of understanding risk and understanding planning better.
[00:08:11] Brendan Windmeyer: And so there's this development and this maturity that we're needing to get to is how are we gonna prioritize those 167 plants and that water network across the state to be able to deliver because otherwise, we will find ourselves in another situation where we are unable to address that.
[00:08:27] Brendan Windmeyer: At the same time, we've got the cost of living pressures coming on and at the moment we've got the war in Iran, which is saying our costs go up by $120,000 just on fuel per month.
[00:08:37] Brendan Windmeyer: So, we've got these drivers where we are needing to then drive continuity of service, but drive it in a commercial sense as well, where we are still providing amazing customer outcomes with cost pressures coming from everywhere as well.
[00:08:50] Piers Clark: What's the scale of the smaller facilities to the larger facilities?
[00:08:54] Brendan Windmeyer: Our largest water treatment plant is Bryn Estyn, which is a fantastic relatively new plant that's been opened about two years ago. And that produces about 160 ML a day.
[00:09:05] Brendan Windmeyer: And then we've got plants that are half a ML. So, we have small plants that are operating in the regions. And the challenges that we've got there is that a lot of them are run-of-river and the raw water quality that comes through is so variable, where our operational challenges are quite significant depending on what's happening in the climate as well.
[00:09:24] Piers Clark: The strategy for these bitty plants, is it to consolidate them or is it to automate them and have them ticking over as small plants serving these disparate rural communities?
[00:09:35] Brendan Windmeyer: So one of our challenges is geography. So we have some islands where we provide services to, and so obviously they won't be joined to a major network. But, we do have the idea of our master strategy and our master plans to be able to consolidate where we can.
[00:09:50] Brendan Windmeyer: So for instance, somewhere like Launceston where you've got 70,000 people, you might think that that should be serviced by one, but that's currently serviced by five water treatment plants in that area. And the network isn't quite joined up there, so there is a bit of master planning to be able to do that. And that will take 50 years to be able to consolidate some of those aging assets as well.
[00:10:10] Piers Clark: Wonderful. So one of the interesting things about your background is you've been in private enterprise, you've been in a contracting organization where efficiency and getting the job done as perfectly as possible, as quickly as possible has been the raison d'etre, yet you joined a government utility.
[00:10:27] Piers Clark: How are you dealing with that progression? Which things are worrying you and which things are you feeling "yep, we've got this right"?
[00:10:34] Brendan Windmeyer: I think that's the best challenge to have and it's why I love the water sector and why I love my job is that ability to be able to influence and provide customer value at the same time as providing the service to our community.
[00:10:45] Brendan Windmeyer: So, that idea of being able to find a dollar and save a dollar is something that I want every single person to be able to do. And if it's $5,000 here or there, if it's per plant at 167 plants, we've got some good savings there. So it is enabling our employees to be able to find those savings and then bank them and then move on.
[00:11:05] Brendan Windmeyer: And that's really what we're trying to do is find whether it be energy efficiency, there's a big program that we're looking at how do we drive each of our plants to be more energy efficient?
[00:11:14] Brendan Windmeyer: Even how many people have we got on a job and bringing that idea of cutting waste out of who turns up to a network's job to dig it out? Who's the right person with the right skill at the right time? That's what we wanna do.
[00:11:25] Brendan Windmeyer: And we are not there yet, but I think that we've got the people that want to be able to do it. And that's the exciting part for me.
[00:11:31] Piers Clark: Brilliant. So now, tell me about the future.
[00:11:34] Brendan Windmeyer: We currently have our price and services plan being determined by our economic regulator. They have built in an efficiency for us that was larger than what we had proposed. Our challenge is to be able to continue our services and grow our engagement and culture progress at the same time as delivering those efficiencies.
[00:11:53] Brendan Windmeyer: And as an organization, we are really leaning into this that we think we can do both: cut costs whilst having our employees more engaged and safer than ever. That's the challenge.
[00:12:04] Brendan Windmeyer: Do we have the answers? Not yet.
[00:12:07] Brendan Windmeyer: But I think that is what's keeping me up at night is how do I get people to own that with me and own that as an organization so that we can all see the way forward without it being a daunting task. 'Cause I think that it's very easy to look back and say somebody else is gonna do this, but it's not gonna happen via one person, it needs to be the whole team.
[00:12:27] Piers Clark: Yeah, I love getting across that message of " save a dollar" matters. And of course, the incentive here is you're not saving a dollar to give to shareholders to take out as dividends. You are saving a dollar to mean that you can better serve those communities who are, as you rightly said earlier, going through a cost of living crisis where every dollar matters. It's wonderful.
Now, we're running out of time, so we always like to finish with a bit of a personal question. And the question for you is, if you could go to a time machine and go back 30 years, what advice would you give a young Brendan Windmeyer?
[00:13:02] Brendan Windmeyer: I think it's as simple as just get on and try everything. One of the things in my career I've prided myself is just saying yes to all the different opportunities. But I think it would be when you're invited into the room, have confidence to be there.
[00:13:15] Brendan Windmeyer: I think early in my career I sat back waiting for someone to invite me to speak and I felt like I had things to offer that I didn't offer. And it would be being able to speak up and provide that insight when I saw that opportunity earlier in my career.
[00:13:30] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Brendan Windmeyer, the General Manager of Operations at TasWater.
[00:13:40] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing and keep safe.