In the midst of historic Arrowtown just over the road from Rationale’s office, nearly 30 attendees came along to our first branch event in the Queenstown Lakes District for many years, with the Arrowtown Museum providing a great setting to network and learn.
First up Edward Guy from Rationale reminded us of the breadth of agencies that rely on good asset management to be able to make good decisions, he also highlighted (quite correctly) that local government perform well in this space and he challenged that other agencies have some serious catching up to do. He touched on the increasing regulatory requirements for local government, highlighting how far the landscape has changed, and that councils and Water CCOs need to be responding to that. Edward also challenged the status quo across the utility sectors, and put forward some potential futures for how utilities could be better set up to further improve asset management, and therefore, community outcomes. These potential futures included how asset management needs to interact with spatial planning and regional deals looking into the future.
Then Damian Spring and Dave Stretch talked about the development of the Bendigo-Ophir Gold Project, which could be New Zealand’s newest and richest gold mine. This was a completely different world from the one that most of the asset managers and engineers in the room deal with and the numbers were staggering. Dave provided the facts about the scale of the enterprise, including the infrastructure and plant with the message resonating with the audience. Damian also highlighted that robust planning has been key to the success of the project so far, reinforcing that the investment was underpinned by solid evidence from extensive investigations – a fact that should be shared with any large scale infrastructure investment public or private.
A great evening all up, enjoyed with colleagues over some quality Central Otago refreshments! This addition to the calendar is set to stay.
Thanks to the Otago/Southland Branch Chair, Mark Baker, for pulling this event together.
