Report Scope and Purpose

Reporting period
This report covers the year 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006.  To make this report as up-to-date as possible, we have included the status of some projects at the time of issue (September 2006).

Reporting boundary
This report covers operations in our geographic service area, which includes Melbourne’s Central Business District and inner and western suburbs (see our service area map).

Changes to company
No significant changes in company size, ownership or products and services have occurred since our 2004–05 Sustainability Report, which was released in September 2005.

We have no partly or fully owned subsidiaries and no joint ventures.

There have been no significant changes to our outsourcing operations since our last report which will significantly affect comparability with other reporting organisations.

Re-statements or changes of information
We have noted where information provided in previous reports has altered.

When calculations are presented, the methods used are described.

We have given an explanation of where changes have been made to measurement methods applied to key economic, environmental and social information.

Policies and internal practices
We operate certified quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management systems and are also certified to the HACCP quality control system. These certifications and the ongoing audits required to maintain them, help improve the quality of the systems we use to produce information included in this report. For more information on these systems, click here.

Independent community consultation
This year we employed URS Corporation to undertake an independent stakeholder consultation on our 2005 Sustainability Report. The consultation helps us to understand how relevant our report was to stakeholders and highlights areas of improvement for this report. It included consultation with our customers, employees, university representatives and other water retailers. Where appropriate, we have aimed to incorporate this feedback and associated actions and initiatives into this report. For example, we have provided more information on our recycled water services.

Independent assurance
We believe that independent assurance is vital to guarantee that the information contained in our Sustainability Report is accurate, transparent, complete and timely. We engaged URS Corporation to verify this year’s report and provide us with an assurance statement. Click here to view the statement.