In that situation, with people already getting sick in the community before that day, it was suggested that the council should have taken that into consideration and issued a boil water notice as soon as possible, instead of a reported two-hour delay.
Mr Yule said there was now a standard operating procedure that whenever it was decided to put chlorine into the system due to pathogens being present, people would be told to boil their water immediately.
"We are doing this because it can take a couple of hours for the chlorine to kick in throughout the system.
"We are being more assertive and doing things quicker than we might have in the past.
"We know how to do this now, it's a pretty well-oiled machine."
Other failings that were noted during the inquiry, particularly to do with the communication of the contamination to the wider community, had also been a focus, Mr Yule said.
When the hearings were being summed up, the council was taken to task about not having a comprehensive enough contact list of vulnerable customers to contact.
Although the council had a list of people on dialysis, schools and goldfish owners to contact, there were delays getting word out to the likes of boarding schools, businesses and the elderly.
Mr Yule said these lists had now been reviewed and updated in conjunction with the Hawke's Bay District Health Board.
"A lot of this was happening before the outbreak but we have made changes and identified those who should be there."
He noted that it was not easy to have a full and complete list of vulnerable people such as the elderly living on their own but he invited people to advise the council if they wanted to be on that list or had friends or family they thought should be known to the council.
Another new protocol had been introduced in times of heavy rain, Mr Yule said.
"We have a new regime after heavy rain at the Brookvale bores when it starts to get past a certain level to do a lot more in-depth testing."
As it was, the testing throughout the network was three times greater than what was required under the drinking water standards, he added.
"We are doing a lot more testing than ever before."