Kia ora koutou
All of NZ woke up in Level 4 today, which was an almost immediate but not unexpected transition, and what is needed to get ahead in this new COVID world. Thankfully much business activity can continue in ways that used to be impossible with video calls and working from home now part of our everyday professionals toolkit. With much family, social, educational, business and cultural activity curtailed, it can be an emotional and reflective time. There is a lot of advice and assistance available to support you and your at home and at work teams – www.covid.govt.nz is a really good place to start with links to resources for business, mental wellbeing, and, of course, official detail on all things COVID19. Our IPWEA NZ team is all working well from our separate home bubbles and wish you well in yours.
COVID19 aside, this is an exciting month for IPWEA NZ.
For those of you with some unexpected time on your hands, maybe take the opportunity to do that upskilling you are always promising yourself. We have plenty available online to keep you busy – from digital badges to recorded webinars. I recommend last week’s 3 Waters Reform Webinar (no charge) with the Department of Internal Affairs team if you missed the live version – the 45 minute presentation was very informative and the Q&A session canvassed a wide range of valuable topics that are important to understand for all those with an involvement or interest in 3 Waters asset management.
If micro-credential professional development is more your scene, we have launched two brand new digital badge courses that promise to take your asset management learning journey to its next level – AM 304 Asset Management Strategy and AM 307 Performance Management. These short online courses follow on from AM 202 Understanding Requirements and AM 204 Asset Management Enablers . So if you have these badges already in your portfolio, how about diving in a little deeper? AM 304 has been developed collaboratively with WSP while AM 307’s development has been with Water New Zealand– ensuring that you will be learning about current best practice from those at the forefront of our profession.
All our digital badges are aligned to the IIMM (International Infrastructure Management Manual) and ISO 55000 framework and cost effectively provide guidance on how to use these essential tools in your everyday practice of asset management – in bite sized chunks of learning (2-4 hours). Although we normally start digital badge courses on the first of the month, for the lockdown period you can commence your learning the day after registering. So register now and we will be in touch with your course details. Those who have registered already for a September start and want to get into it, please contact training.nz@ipwea.org.
Registrations have also opened for our inaugural Water Asset Management Forum 17-18 November 2021 in Wellington. This new forum to the calendar is hosted jointly by IPWEA NZ and Water New Zealand and will focus on what we need to do in order to meet some of the outcomes being targeted by the 3 waters reform – and how asset management is a crucial contributor to the success of those outcomes.
Our IPWEA NZ Asset Management Excellence Awards finalists are announced in today’s eNews too – see below. The finalists in each of the eight award categories have been judged from 36 entries as being outstanding examples of the amazing work done by members across a wide variety of projects. Congratulations to all our finalists – the work you have completed is propelling New Zealand forward, and represents the execution of best practice asset management that all of us aspire to delivering. We are looking forward to announcing and celebrating the achievements of the category winners and recognising one of these finalist projects as the best of the very best – the IPWEA NZ Asset Management Excellence Supreme Award winner.
Finally, a word on our Future Fit Aotearoa conference in Auckland 7-9 September. As the Government has indicated, our Level 4 lockdown period gives New Zealand time to safely better understand the scale of community transmission. As joint hosts of the conference with ACE New Zealand, we will also take a breath to better consider the possibilities of holding the conference as scheduled or activating our contingency planning. We will be in touch again as decisions are able to be made with reasonable certainty.
Noho ora mai
Murray
