Parks & Open Space & Contract Management in Hume City Council

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Anna Miles
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1 Parks & Open Space & Contract Management in Hume Council Jason Summers March 2015

2 Introduction The Hume Council story Contracts at Hume Challenges of contract management Benefits of contracting out work Summary Question time

4 Evaporation Vs Rainfall in Hume 250 Evaporation and Rainfall Data in Melbourne Airport Evaporation & Rainfall in mm January February March April May June Months July August September October November December Evaporation in mm Rainfall in mm

5 Profile Area: 503 sq.km Population: 175,483 Growth rate: 2.7% pa Aged 17 & under: 27.8% Born Overseas: 29.2% Country of origin: Turkey(3.9%) Iraq (3.0%) UK (2.7%) Italy (1.7%) Lebanon (1.5%) Malta (1.2%) (as at August 2011)

7 Parks & Open Space Department We have the 4 units of Parks Open Space Trees & bushland Turf and Irrigation Horticulture and Play space Projects and Infrastructure We have 75 in house staff in all areas We use a lot of contractor support to deliver our services We have a $19M recurrent operating budget growing at 4% per annum

9 Hume Council Story Parks & Open Space department currently has in house teams in all areas of the department We contract using schedule of rates using annual supply contractors for all areas We specify works quality and frequencies via a level of service and standards documents We have AS4801 OHS system in place We also have a ISO9001 Quality system for all our procedures and processes

10 Protection of remnant trees

11 We have 13 team leaders who supervise contractors and council staff We usually have a panel of suppliers with each contract which provides competition and work with building relationships created over time. We learn what different contractors are good at and use their expertise to get good results. We do a lot of data collection to drive our programs for tree and playground management We have collected Parks asset data and will use this information to manage these assets

12 Tree Pruning We ensure all young trees are formatively pruned

13 Contracts tendered at Hume Mowing and roadside slashing contracts Spraying contracts Sports fields and Irrigation repair contracts Tree pruning and removal contracts Tree Establishment contract Planting mulching watering and formative pruning Tree data collection contract Land management contracts Horticultural Maintenance contracts Landscape construction contracts Mulches, gravels and soils supply contract

15 Challenges in contractor management Getting additional funds for new assets that are created by developers and Capital works programs to pay for contractors Contractor supervision to ensure quality outcomes in a large geographical area Hume Council is 503 square kilometres Not having a Corporate Asset Management system to record works into. Council has just tendered a Corporate Asset Management system having spent six months developing a specification. Being paper based in a electronic age!

17 Advantages We build up good working relationships with our contractors We try to employ local companies to keep Council money local We undertake training with our contractors and in house staff together at times We don t need to have every piece of equipment we can hire tools and expertise when we need it We only pay our contractors when they are working

19 Advantages We can call on additional resources at short notice in a storm event We also are requesting they take on local trainees and apprentices as part of their contracts to employ locals They can provide different insights and ideas on how to boost productivity or going about managing new or different assets. We can use contracted rates to undertake capital works projects and call additional resources as required.

21 Future work we need to do! We are documenting our current level of service We need to propose a new three tier level of service for the different park types Benchmarking using Yardstick Doing park user surveys to find out what our community want us to improve on Become political to let councilors know what we are trying to achieve Listen to our community and councilors and provide options and feedback to improve the city

26 Summary Contractors are vital in managing our Parks & Open Space. Contract management and supervision are crucial for good outcomes Developing working relationships with contractors over time is beneficial We will explore some lump sum contracts as we get a handle on our asset data and information moving forward. Thankyou..

27 Questions? A Gateway

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