Customer engagement key for Coliban Water

Coliban Water has taken a step change in its approach to customer engagement ahead of its 2023-28 Pricing Submission. Inside Water spoke to Managing Director Damian Wells to find out more.

Coliban Water provides water and wastewater services to 49 towns across 16,500sqkm in North-Central Victoria. It services rural and urban areas from Cohuna and Echuca in the north to Kyneton and Trentham in the south. Coliban Water manages, maintains, and operates 35 reservoirs and water storage basins.

Damian Wells is the Managing Director of Coliban Water. Having grown up in the small town of Merbein in northern Victoria, he has made his home in Bendigo. He was always around water as a child. His father was an irrigator and grape grower, so Wells spent much of his formative years around the Murray River. He watched his father fix sprinklers, prepare the irrigation, and all manner of water-related issues.

Wells studied environmental management at Flinders University, completed an MBA from Charles Sturt University and has remained fascinated by water throughout his life.

“I think I was always going to work in water. I have worked in lots of different aspects of water, starting with water quality and environmental flows. Then I worked in catchment management, moved on to operations management for the rural water business and as an environmental regulator at EPA Victoria. Ultimately working at Coliban Water as the Managing Director is probably my dream job,” said Wells.

Coliban Water and the community

Coliban Water is based in Bendigo. Wells has fallen in love with the region where his company operates. He has spent time as the director of a couple of not-for-profits and has been involved in various community service organisations. Growing up in a small country town, he has seen people always doing something for the community and supporting people.

“My parents were certainly a big role model in that regard, and my wife is one of the most generous, selfless people I have ever met. They have all had a big influence on me in this regard. I believe Coliban has had a long customer-oriented and focused culture,” said Wells.

Wells and Coliban Water want to build on the legacy of others when it comes to a customer-focused culture. With that in mind, Coliban Water has proposed doubling its financial investment in its hardship program from a current budget this financial year of $285,000 to $570,000 per year from 2023. Coliban also helped its customers last year access $325,000 in Utility Relief Grants offered by Government.

“Fairness has been a big part of our focus, and it came up a lot in our Pricing Submission works,” said Wells.

Customer engagement and community focus

As part of its engagement with the community, Coliban Water took a step change in its approach. Like some other water corporations around Victoria, Coliban Water selected 32 people from across the region to participate in a Community Panel. The goal was to get a deeper understanding of what the customer base needed.

This deliberative engagement process represented a cross-section of customers and their views. Every member contributed their time, experiences, and energy to the process. The Community Panel came together for five days over five months to consider Coliban Water’s services and pricing. They provided nine recommendations that the Board ultimately accepted.

“This sort of deliberative engagement process is an arm’s length community panel, in that it was independently recruited and facilitated at arms-length from the Board and management,” said Wells. “We discussed the outcomes and recommendations with the Board. As Board Directors and Executives, we are often trained to try to control things, so it takes a lot of courage to embark on a deliberative engagement process.”

Wells acknowledged the importance of ceding control to the Community Panel in considering the big three challenges of climate change, population growth and ageing assets.

“The Community Panel did a huge amount of preparatory work. They spent the first couple of days doing a lot of listening and learning to grapple with what needs to happen for water services through the region for the next five years,” said Wells.

What Coliban Water learned from their customer engagement

The Community Panel focused on the need for Coliban Water to invest in its asset base.

“Many of our assets are very old and desperately need renewal,” said Wells. “They are undersized relative to the population that they serve. We need to reform our capital program. We proposed increasing it from about $150 million over five years to $435 million. That’s a significant change, so the panel discussed this at length. They had to weigh up the question of intergenerational equity.”

Intergenerational equity refers to the idea of debt now against recovery of the debt later. How much can be charged to customers now against customers through time and into the future? Since the Essential Services Commission model is a borrow-to-invest model, the idea is that customers service that debt over the life of the assets as they receive a service benefit.

Coliban Water learned that customers are okay with smooth and modest increases in prices over time, as opposed to dramatic spikes in prices. The panel recommended that Coliban fund most of its growth in capital expenditure through debt while also passing on a modest price increase.

“With that in mind, we have opted for a 1.9 per cent increase plus inflation for the first two years and then a 2.5 per cent increase plus inflation for the last three years. Obviously, we hope the current inflation figure will moderate sooner rather than later. That works out at about a $161 increase from 2023 to 2028, which is at or below the national average water bill,” said Wells.

Fairness a key focus arising from customer engagement

The Community Panel also spoke a lot about fairness. As mentioned, Coliban Water has proposed doubling their financial investment in their hardship program, called Coliban Assist, from $285,000 per year to $570,000 per year. There was, and still is, a strong view that while investments must be made, no one must be left behind.

“Supporting customers experiencing vulnerability is a key part of what Coliban Water stands for. This increased investment will give us more opportunities to assist more customers across our region whilst having the quality of assets to underpin our services,” said Wells.

One thing to note is that the engagement and learning that Coliban Water has done for the 2023-28 Pricing Submission is not limited to the Community Panel. Wells spoke about engaging with welfare providers, human services agencies, Traditional Owners, and regional local governments.

“We got letters of support from the local branch of Salvation Army and the Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Owner organisation,” he said. “We also got letters of support from local governments in our region.”

He also noted that the region’s water and climate literacy levels are strong. When web portals, pop-up stalls and surveys were offered, 86 per cent of respondents said that Coliban Water had struck the right balance in its proposal. Wells admitted that he was pleasantly surprised at the high number.

“I think people get it, in that climate change is significant. They know the population is growing because they see all the new developments. They see the new houses and ask if there is enough water. Do you have the right assets to serve this? To have such positive feedback from the community is encouraging,” said Wells.

Indigenous communities, Traditional Owners, and customer engagement

One area in which Coliban Water has an enormous commitment is its relationship with Traditional Owner groups. Coliban Water’s region includes the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Taungurung, Yorta Yorta and Barapa Barapa peoples.

“We are committed to reconciliation and acknowledge the dispossession, loss and harm experienced by Aboriginal people,” he said. “We support Aboriginal enterprises wherever possible, a commitment our directors and staff hold.”

Coliban Water’s directors and executives have completed cultural competency training. A recent cultural immersion run by Djaara was a highlight in addition to other in-person and online training. Wells believes it is the start of skilling up, building cultural competency and understanding of Aboriginal culture, the impacts of dispossession and how best to engage with Traditional Owners.

“We have also engaged Aboriginal-owned businesses like Djandak, a business of Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation (DDWCAC). They deliver work for us, whether that is revegetating rivers, building amenities in and around some of our storage assets, or building boat ramps,” said Wells.

Digital meters and customer engagement

Coliban Water has been rolling out digital water meters throughout its region for a few years. All the small towns have installed digital meters, while Bendigo will have them over the next 18 months.

Wells said that the benefits were being seen already.

“There have been huge water savings in that we can see where there are irregularities in customer water consumption. That almost certainly means a leak on the customer’s side of the meter,” he said. “Notifying customers of that means they can intervene early, get a plumber in, and fix that leak. It saves money, heartache, and water, so it’s great for network efficiency.”

Digital meters also help Coliban Water understand network demand far better than before. It has helped them plan infrastructure needs and target their water network investment.

Coliban Water has also rolled out a digital platform for its customer relationship systems. It now offers email billing that saves paper and meets a customer preference for receiving bills electronically. Coliban is looking to offer monthly billing, which many customers will prefer in managing household cashflows. Some customers would prefer smaller monthly bills rather than quarterly bills. This feedback has arisen from quarterly bills being a bit bigger to digest for household budgets. On top of that, Coliban Water is looking at potentially offering real-time water consumption tracking.

“If people can better understand their water use and volumes, they can change their behaviour accordingly,” Wells said. “The benefits are incredible. We could even offer time-of-use pricing, where we could offer discounts on the price of water overnight to fill tanks or to incentivise automatic watering systems further. We know that garden watering drives peak summer demand, so if we can reduce demand during summer peaks, we could save our customers money. At the same time, we could avoid upgrading the size of our network pipes for the sake of a small number of days per year in heatwaves.”

Customer engagement and feedback have been key to the development of Coliban Water’s Pricing Submission. It has continued to focus on customer engagement throughout its operations, and Managing Director Damian Wells has ensured that this engagement remains key for the organisation.