A burst pipe in Wellington. Photo / Jack Crossland
A burst pipe in Wellington. Photo / Jack Crossland
Wellington Water believes it has "exhausted" all available front-line water personnel from the region.
Deliverability is shaping up to be the next big challenge for councils across the country as they dramatically increase spending to deal with an ageing three waters network.
The Wellington Water Committee's new chairman Campbell Barry raised the issue on his appointment to the role earlier this week.
"Putting money in a budget line isn't going to fix a water leak or replace a pipe", he said.
Wellington Water's latest company update said it was "almost impossible" now to find trained front-line staff.
"So we have turned our attention to establishing a more robust training pathway. Starting with school leavers; working through on-the-job training/occupation learning and then deployed into the workforce."
Last year, Wellington Water mooted an accelerated apprenticeship scheme for an essential Three Waters workforce to retrain 100 people.
A sinkhole opened up on Jervois Quay earlier this year after a 100-year-old stormwater pipe collapsed. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The company unsuccessfully made the pitch to the Government as a shovel ready Covid-19 response project.
The most recent company update said the new training pathway would be a smaller version of the training proposal it made to the Government.
Wellington Water chief executive Colin Crampton told the Herald the increasing number of faults in an ageing network was creating a bigger volume of work.
The company was currently short of about 20 front-line staff.
The current pool of 100 workers was being topped up through sub-contracting, which Crampton said was an "ongoing problem".
Wellington Water chief executive Colin Crampton (left) and Wellington Mayor Andy Foster assess a map of the city's water network. Photo / Georgina Campbell
Crampton said Wellington Water was also grappling with an ageing workforce.
"Our focus now is to bring on capable young people in some way or form to start replenishing that workforce."
Draft findings of a Deloitte report that assessed Wellington Water's resources against the scale of its capital programme also found a significant full-time equivalent gap across the company and its suppliers.
To address this, Crampton said they were working with councils around smoothing funding commitments over the next three years
"So that you don't have any drop-offs or hard step changes.
The company was also reviewing whether to add more people to its contractor and consultant panel to open it up to other players.
Crampton said these consultants and contractors would then need certainty of work through councils signing off their Long Term Plans and Wellington Water assuring their role in the delivery of projects.
"If you get those combinations right, then consultants and contractors will invest in that programme and scale up themselves.
"We've got to really work hard to encourage them to build their resources and stay with us and get the work done in an environment where there's quite a big demand on infrastructure and generally an ongoing shortage of people to do that work."
