Message from the Managing Director and Chairman

The past year witnessed City West Water’s 10th birthday, and pleasingly it has been an outstanding year for the company, our people and customers.

Our water sales on a per person basis were the lowest in the company’s history, even lower than under Stage 2 water restrictions.  That may seem a strange thing to celebrate, but it is a testament to what a brilliant job our Service Sustainability team has done on water conservation and how exceptionally well our customers have responded.

For the first time in the company’s history, at 30 June 2006 we had no customers on greater than 5 unplanned water interruptions over a twelve month period. This is one of the key measures of how effectively we are managing our water network. Our Engineering team is very focused on asset management, and in particular on efficiently delivering our customer Key Performance Indicators and we performed very well in this area, more detail can be viewed here.

After a year’s careful planning by our Operations and Maintenance department together with our maintenance contractor Infraserv, we are pleased to report that the Commonwealth Games passed without any water or sewer supply incidents marring the Games.  

We are also very proud of the job done by our Trade Waste and Cleaner Production teams over the past year, and of the response to their efforts by our industrial and commercial customers.  Details of these achievements can be found later in this report, but briefly, their combined efforts have identified and implemented significant resource efficiency resulting in improved trade waste quality, lower trade waste quantities and a dramatic reduction in the salt level in trade waste.

Despite below budget water and trade waste revenues, we achieved our Profit before Tax budget, which was pleasing.

Another highlight for 2005-06 was participating in development of the Victorian Government’s Central Region Sustainable Water Strategy.  This strategy, the final of which will be released later in 2006, plans to manage demand and meet the necessary supply of water for the central region of Victoria, including Melbourne, for the next 50 years.  Out of that exercise, the Melbourne water businesses – City West Water, Melbourne Water, South East Water and Yarra Valley Water – have also developed the Water Supply Demand Strategy for Melbourne.  Our focus for the next ten years is mainly on demand reduction, our target for which is to keep consumption at current low levels, and to reduce it even further.  This will be a principal driver for our business for those next ten years and beyond.

Looking forward to 2006-07, we see a challenging year ahead.  Water storages are low, and water restrictions a possibility.  Also, we have embarked on our next Water Plan, which is a detailed strategy for our business spanning five years (2008-13) and is the basis on which the Essential Services Commission sets our prices. Putting it together involves a lot of work right across our business.

In addition, the City West Water team will do their best to deliver results which are as good if not better than this year, and that’s a real challenge.

Anne Barker, Managing Director
Alan Seale, Chairman