Mandalay Newsletter: Welcome to Shire of Northam and Juan-Mari Davies!

Hi ,

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 30th anniversary of LAWMAC (the Local Authority Waste Management Action Committee) in Cooktown. This has not only been the longest-running and one of the most functional regional waste groups within Australia, but attending one of their regional workshops is akin to attending a waste conference in terms of the value and learning you receive.

Mandalay has been fortunate to receive their support over that time and I was honoured to have the opportunity to share my thoughts on the last 30 years and the coming 30 years. I talked to the progression of the national waste targets and what that means in terms of councils serving their communities and spoke to the common challenges of that.

If we look at the actual waste targets in place and the inevitable future targets, they all require improved data to both achieve and measure them. Data is even spoken about in relation to improving transparency of performance. Our mission to support local government can be reflected in a number of these.

Mandalay’s journey over the last 5-6 years has focused on getting us to the start line of the digital revolution that is going to take place. Activities have included improving our cloud security and cloud infrastructure, setting up centralised data management, and the required systems to support our clients on their journeys.

Getting the disciplines in place that give our clients the trust to allow us to work with them, will allow us to support their evolution over the coming period as they go about achieving these outcomes. From increased data transparency with their community, different levels of government and their stakeholders all the way through to how they might go about measuring reduction generation for a consumer.

If you’re interested in my presentation, please get in touch.

Speaking with Kayla Burges, Waste Projects Officer at the Shire, monthly reporting was once an hours-long process and user errors were difficult to identify and resolve. This formed a key driver in their decision to move to Mandalay.

Since implementation, the team can now easily identify issues and work towards resolving them, and reporting has been significantly improved.

Kayla had nothing but praise for the implementation team during the transition and said it was great having Mandalay’s Senior Implementation Consultant, Kumar Kannan, onsite to conduct training with the team. Their Operators all love using the new system.

Juan-Mari first encountered Mandalay while working with the City of Wanneroo and then again at EMRC in Western Australia. Both experiences gave her the opportunity to work with Mandalay as a customer, from implementing Facility Software and the Residents Voucher Product as a new customer through to working with the Facility product within an operational environment. She is looking forward to the challenge of working within a different area of the industry.

Juan-Mari has a passion for business improvement, improving processes and making sure you can do something with what you are making. In previous roles she saw the significant amount of data being generated and the role this can play in providing information to councils and their communities. Things like ‘what are we doing’, ‘how much we are diverting’, and identifying where our attention should be focused.

Juan-Mari loves the outdoors, nature, and spending time with her family. Working within the WARR industry has given her the opportunity to offer a significant contribution to the environment and community that she lives in through influencing industry to change their processes and to divert waste from landfill.

Her advice to others who have worked in the industry for an extended period is to think about the difference you have made. Juan-Mari feels very fortunate that she has been able to stay in the industry and do something meaningful.

We’re thrilled to welcome you to the team Juan-Mari!

There has been lots of time spent on the road this month for our Senior Implementation Consultant, Kumar Kannan. He has visited several of our customers to deliver training for new staff, refresher training for existing staff and worked with teams to review and identify new data capture processes.

His first stop was Victoria and the team at CMCS (Langwarrin Quarry) and City of Greater Geelong, then back to WA to spend time with City of Rockingham and a quick trip to City of Mandurah. Kumar rounded out the month with the team at ACT NOWaste. It’s been a very busy few weeks and Kumar has earned a well-deserved break.

There will often be prolonged delays in acquiring new hardware and getting the business back to normal operations.

Costs Extend Beyond Acquiring New Hardware

The cost is more than just the outlay of acquiring new hardware and getting it online:

There are often inherent safety issues when traffic controls are offline,
The cost of issuing manual tickets,
Double handling to rekey manual ticket information into your system,
Loss of evidence data due to image capture being unavailable,
Costs associated with delayed reporting, rekeying errors, etc.