January 2024

Welcome to 2024

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you were able to take a restful break and enjoy the festive season with loved ones.

We concluded 2023 with the Water Minister’s Climate Innovation Challenge ceremony hosted by Melbourne Water. Winners were announced by Hon Harriet Shing MP Minister for Water.

We were delighted to announce a number of awards including an extra $100K of funding by the Minister and DEECA to support progressing two of the projects. In all, four projects were funded – a great outcome and we thank all the people and organisations who participated and contributed. We look forward to a bigger and better WMCIC in 2024. See full details below.

Following on from our last Spotlight, we are now starting to receive the analysis and testing results from the Pyroco Biochar trial run at Melton in November. We are quite excited with what we’ve seen so far. The Mark 2 pilot plant has done everything we anticipated, and the results received to date are most encouraging. Once we have received all of the results, we will hold a Lunch and Learn to share the trial outcomes with you.

December is a crazy month for most of us, so it’s been good to have January to do some strategic thinking and planning for 2024.

The IWN Members Conference is locked in for 29 July at RMIT Storey Hall, on the theme of Collaborative Transformation. Please save the date. We are putting together an exciting program of speakers, panels, conversations and activities which we will share with you in a future newsletter.

We’ve continued on our functional integration with VicWater by merging our IT support contracts. This will save IWN a fair bit of cost that we will put back into our programs to benefit our members through being able to do more innovation trials and assessments. We will continue to rationalise our administration functions to ensure we are maximising the funds available for the programs.

Speaking of programs, we’ve done a bunch of thinking and consultation on how we can better set up our programs for success. We have created a roadmap and working group structure for each of our programs so we can bring clarity to each program’s objectives, its key activities and formalise the roles within the programs to achieve their outcomes and objectives. We are piloting this new way with the Circular Economy Program later this month and will share these frameworks with you in February’s newsletter.

And finally, we’ve also introduced a few more colours into the IWN colour palette to brighten up our image a bit. Hope you like them!

Take care and may 2024 be an amazing year for you.

Cheers

JC

and the winners are.....

The 2023 Water Minister's Climate Innovation Challenge wrapped up for 2023. It was a fantastic outcome that successfully demonstrated ground-breaking ideas and initiatives aimed at transforming the water industry's approach towards sustainability. December 5, saw our six finalists present at Melbourne Water, leading up to the Winners announcement from Hon. Harriet Shing, Minister for Water.

Congratulations to our winners & finalists for 2023

Joint winners

💧Yarra Valley Water /Barwon Water / North East Water - Meta-analysis of low carbon cement alternatives for water industry applications

💧Barwon Water - Cellulose recovery from wastewater

Runner Up

💧 GWMWater (Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water) – Donald Community Power Plant

Special Commendation

💧South East Water - Scope 1 emissions direct & real-time monitoring on aerobic digester

Finalists

💧Greater Western Water - Above & Beyond: Elevating Environmental Stewardship through Drone Technology

💧Central Highlands Water - Gas Substitution Feasibility Study for Ballarat

Thank you. A huge shout out to all those involved in the successful delivery of the 2023 WMCIC.  Thank you to our IWN Champions and the team at DEECA who supported, helped set up and run the Challenge.  Thank you to all the people and organisations who took the time to put together a submission. Thank you to our Executive Steering Committee who kept an eye on all things governance. And finally, a special thank you to our dedicated judging panel who put in the time to assess a very competitive field of applications.

IWN members conference 2024

Monday 29 July

Storey Hall

RMIT, Melbourne

Following the success of last year's conference, "Positive disruption" we are pleased to announce we are busy planning this years event: 

Collaborative transformation

Transformation of the Victorian water industry requires a unified approach. Success will come from diverse stakeholders actively collaborating and working together cohesively to drive significant positive disruption across the sector for the communities we serve.

Keep an eye out for more details to come. 

We are currently seeking sponsors. Contact us at enquiries@iwn.org.au if you would like a copy of the sponsorship prospectus.

8 February 2024

10.00 - 3.00pm

Deakin Downtown

Collins street Melbourne

You may have seen updates throughout the year about this great project happening at Westernport Water. The first Forum about project progress has been organised. Let us know if you would like any more information by contacting us at enquiries@iwn.org.au.

Kynan 

IWN's new Goulburn Valley Water Champion

Meet Kynan Pell, a digital support whiz, hailing from Shepparton and stationed at Goulburn Valley Water. When not fixing tech puzzles, he’s mastering Magic the Gathering and exploring the world, fuelled by a passion for golf and gourmet delights. With a knack for IT wizardry and a recent leap into the Champions Program, Kynan is geared up to connect, innovate, and grow within the water industry while chasing personal growth, one day at a time.

At IWN, we are looking for passionate people who are genuine about identifying solutions to drive innovation across our industry. You don’t need to be a subject matter expert, simply bring your enthusiasm to our fabulous program.
These volunteer roles involve about four hours/month. If you'd like to see a position description or have a confidential discussion with us, please get in touch via our enquiries email. We are looking for our next...

Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration Program

Deputy Program Manager

Alumni Program

Program Manager

New Programs

We are looking for Program Managers and Deputy Program Managers to head up these two new programs and develop the roadmap for their success. 

Safety innovation

Program Manager and

Deputy Program Manger 

Contaminants of concern

Program Manager and

Deputy Program Manger 

Lunch & Learn

7 February 12.00 - 1.00 pm

online with MS Teams

Salesforce Net Zero Cloud solution

Join this Lunch and Learn, to hear how Salesforce along with The Big Zero, are partnering with Utilities in Australia to embed data to decision making and reporting processes to achieve Net Zero. 

Webinar Series

Liquid Integrity Solutions (LIS) Water Storage Monitoring Trial outcome

Join Teal Watkins and Simon Mann from Liquid Integrity Solutions (LIS) to hear about the excellent results from our recent trials on their latest innovation in water storage leak detection.

Expressions of Interest

NDT Testing opportunity using Voliro drone

Following on from our successful IUAI Drone trials at TasWater and Lower Murray Water, we now have an opportunity to trial the latest Voliro Drone Innovation with IUAI for Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) of assets.  

We are looking for IWN Members to partner with IWN and IUAI to conduct these trials. Please contact us at enquiries@iwn.org.au to register your interest.

Pride in Water

Midsumma Pride March 

Join us: Sunday February 4, 2024

Wear your best rainbow outfit, high-vis or perhaps bring along a rainbow umbrella and let’s show how proud we are for our LGBTQIA+ colleagues in the water industry. Contact us at enquiries@iwn.org.au for more information.

Did you know we now have 12 different delivery programs?

You can head over to our website to see what's happening on our program pages.

Check out our operating structure....