2015 National Local Government Infrastructure and Asset Management
Conference
Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15, 2015
Rydges Melbourne, 186 Exhibition Street
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Exploring the broadening scope of infrastructure management at a time of rapid change
Strengthening leadership and influence to deliver more with less
Integrating community priorities, asset management and service planning
The Twelfth National Local Government Infrastructure and Asset Management Conference will continue the
tradition of:
 quality speakers from around Australia
 ‘good practice’ knowledge-sharing, tools and templates to maximise Council sustainability
 building credibility for local government to demonstrate ‘yes, we do manage our assets very well’
Key focus areas of the 2015 event include:
 Financial sustainability: including the role of debt
 Infrastructure planning methodologies
 Community engagement processes that deliver
 Effective business case analysis
 Heavy vehicles: where to from here?
 Public lighting: LED futures
 Bridges: how long do they last?
 ISO 55000: how does it line up?
 Automated vehicles are coming
 Financing options
 Trees: a breakthrough
This is one event not to be missed
if you are serious about the
financial sustainability
of your Council
Hosted by the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) on behalf of local government nationally
Program
Day 1: Thursday May 14
8.30am
Registration and coffee
Welcome, MAV President
9am
‘Successfully addressing asset and financial management challenges’, John
9.10am
Comrie, JAC Comrie Pty Ltd.
John Comrie has had an extensive background in the public sector, with a strong
focus on local government. He headed the South Australian Government’s Office of
Local Government and prior to that the Local Government Association of SA and a
large local Council in metropolitan Adelaide. He has strong beliefs about the ways
in which Councils can successfully address the challenge of financial sustainability,
including the use of debt and maximising revenue.
‘Regional Road Groups can make a difference’, Alex Green, Director, Works
9.50am
and Services, Corangamite Shire Council
Regional Road Groups are now in place in all States around Australia and will play
an increasingly important role in future infrastructure planning and funding as State
and Federal Governments seek to become more efficient in decision-making and
implementation. Alex will document the journey of the Great South Coast Regional
Road Group to date as well as its future direction.
Morning tea
10.25am
‘The role of Business Case Analysis in co-ordinating assets, strategic
10.50am
direction, infrastructure, service planning to achieve the best outcome for a
council’, Ray Bongiorno, Director Sweett Group.
Ray, who specialises in the public sector environment, consults directly with CEOs,
and executive management teams in the development and stewardship of major
investment strategies. Ray’s project involvement spans feasibility and strategic
advisory, including a major focus on collaborating with clients on business case
frameworks. He has worked with many Councils around Australia.
‘Creating public places with citizens in the drivers seat’, Lucinda Hartley,
11.30am
CEO, CoDesign Studio
CoDesign is a social enterprise tackling social exclusion through exciting, low cost
neighbourhood improvement projects. CoDesign works with communities,
governments and service providers to create new types of public spaces that
transform neighbourhoods into thriving sustainable places to live and work. Lucinda
Hartley works to better connect people with places. She advises locally and globally
on approaches to urban development that are faster, cheaper and simpler. Lucinda
spent two years working in slum communities in Vietnam and Cambodia before cofounding CoDesign Studio. Lucinda is also an elected representative to the UNHabitat Youth Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Collaborative for Inclusive Urbanism
and a member of the global Place Leadership Council. Lucinda was also listed in
The Age Melbourne Magazine in 2012 as one of Melbourne’s ‘Top 100’ most
influential people. She will describe a number of case studies in her presentation.
‘Local Government and infrastructure planning: the challenging road ahead’,
12.05pm
Menno Henneveld, Vice President, World Road Association.
Menno Henneveld has had a highly distinguished background including
Commissioner of Main Roads Western Australia from 2002 where he provided ten
years of leadership, National Professional Engineer of the Year for 2012,
(Engineers Australia), Chair of Austroads and Founder and current Chair of the
ROADS Foundation (Traineeships in the Road Industry). He will describe his views
on the role that local Government has the potential to play in a future that will
certainly not be ‘business as usual’.
12.40pm
1.35pm
Lunch
‘Doing more with less in managing civil infrastructure: current challenges
and knowledge required for optimised and sustainable decisions’, Sujeeva
Setunge, Professor and Head of Civil Engineering, RMIT University.
RMIT has taken a national lead in asset management in a number of areas
including deterioration forecasting and maintenance optimisation of Civil
Infrastructure assets including community buildings, bridges, seaports, stormwater
network and sewers, buildings, with analysis of deterioration profiles and systems,
and is now also moving into a new ground-breaking project: Tree Inventory,
Canopy & Risk Assessment. Sujeeva is currently managing a number of industry
funded projects in Civil Infrastructure asset management where she is working on
failure modelling, estimation of remaining life, disaster resilience and building asset
management software
2.10pm
‘LED Street Lighting: large scale replacements, maintenance charges and
what will come next’, Paul Brown, Managing Director, Ironbark Sustainability.
Councils around Australia know that there are massive energy, cost and
greenhouse savings to be made from changing over street lights to more energy
efficient alternatives. And dozens have made the switch, saving up to 70% in
energy use. However, as is often the case, one of the main reasons for the lack of
LEDs in Australia is much more boring – simple economics. Paul will explain this
complex area with case studies of what has worked and provide advice for the
future.
2.40pm
‘How long will your concrete bridge last?’, Norbert Michel, Manager
Infrastructure Disciplines, ARRB Group.
This presentation will explore the various aspects of concrete technology,
deterioration of concrete structures, and methods of preventing damage to
reinforced concrete structures.
3.10pm
3.30pm
Afternoon tea
‘The future of supply chain logistics and implications for local Councils’,
Hermione Parsons, Director, Institute for Supply Chain and Logistics,
Victoria University.
Hermione is the Director (and Associate Professor) of the Institute for Supply
Chain and Logistics at Victoria University which is the only Institute of its type in
Australia, providing leadership and knowledge creation in freight logistics, supply
and value chain applied research. Hermione has held executive management
positions in public and private sector organisations and created and led numerous
national and international projects in Australia and across the Asia Pacific region.
4pm
‘A Better Future for National Heavy Vehicles’, Sal Petroccitto, CEO, National
Heavy Vehicle Regulator.
Having had systems problems with the initial NHVR launch, the NHVR is now
adopting a more collaborative and step by step approach with their future planning.
Sal will explain the better way and implications for Councils. This will include the
AccessCONNECT Program to design and implement a national access business
model, built upon a responsive and consistent policy framework, lean and practical
process flows and a user-centred, integrated online system.
4.30pm
‘Using recycled materials in pavement construction: future trends’, Trish
McGee, Senior Manager, Climate Change and Sustainability Services Ernst
and Young.
Trish has had an extensive background in the use of recycled materials, as
manager of Eco-Buy, and was also project director of a report commissioned by
Sustainability Victoria into the use of recycled materials in pavement construction.
As the availability of quarry materials is reducing in many areas the price is
increasing. What can Councils do about this long term trend?
5pm-6pm
Informal networking session
Day 2: Friday, May 15
‘City Deals: a new infrastructure approach’, Praveen Thakur, Associate
9am
Director, KPMG.
Praveen will discuss why Australian infrastructure planners seeking to lift economic
productivity should look to the UK ‘City Deals’ as a model for our cities and regions.
9.45am
10.25am
10.50am
11.30am
The UK City Deal model is expanding rapidly and is an innovative strategy for
building stronger urban and regional growth through smarter strategic planning,
infrastructure investment and local governance. The model enables a range of local
governments to come together and agree on infrastructure priorities. This
has initiated a dramatic increase in local investment and cut through political
discourse to focus on ensuring investment maximises economic growth.
The Property Council of Australia is currently working with partners and all spheres
of government to adapt the approach to Australia’s strategic needs.
The Participatory Budgeting process at Darebin Council, Annie Bolitho, facilitator.
The participatory budgeting approach for involving communities in budget decisions
has been used successfully in some countries, such as Brazil for over 20 years. New
York and Chicago are committed to participatory budgeting and so is London. There
have also been successful juries in Sydney, Geraldton, and Adelaide.
In 2014 Darebin Council involved citizens in making decisions about spending and
priorities for a defined aspect of the Council budget, the Infrastructure Fund. The
jury’s recommendations were innovative, and driven by criteria such as access to
community infrastructure by all citizens. They were adopted unanimously by Darebin
councillors. Annie Bolitho will describe how the process was managed and will
provide insights for other Councils considering this path.
Morning tea
‘ISO 55000 and the benefits of implementation for Councils’, Tom Carpenter,
IQ-AM
ISO 55000 is gaining acceptance and many Councils are looking at it closely. Tom
Carpenter will explore the road ahead. Tom is the CEO and Director of The Institute
of Quality Asset Management Pty Ltd (IQ-AM), a working group member of PC251,
the ISO Technical Committee who developed the ISO 55000/1/2 suite of
International Asset Management Standards, and Australia’s representative on
ISO/CASCO WG39, who developed ISO/IEC 17021-Part 5 (competence
requirements for auditing and certification of asset management systems). He has
more than 30 years’ professional experience in applying his asset management skills
in utilities, industry associations, regulators, mining, defence, primary and tertiary
health care, roads departments, local government, state treasuries and other central
government agencies and think tanks, child care, food, chemical and oil industries
‘Dream stations’, Ian Woodcock, Urban Design, Melbourne University.
Some of Melbourne’s most drab and dysfunctional suburban railway stations have
been reimagined as vibrant public transport hubs serviced by London-style elevated
train lines, in a new exhibition that posits a future transport network designed to cope
with the city's relentless population boom. The exhibition, Dream Stations, is an
attempt to breathe new life into nine stations around Melbourne that have been
nominated by local councils as unattractive places disconnected from the local
community. Central to reviving the stations and their often-derelict surrounds is a
proposal to elevate Melbourne’s rail lines, as an efficient way to remove level
crossings and create spaces below for shops and community crossing points.
Elevated rail lines already run through inner parts of Melbourne, including Richmond,
Collingwood and Hawthorn. Project leader Ian Woodcock, research fellow in urban
design at the University of Melbourne, has found most Melbourne railway stations
''are difficult to find and difficult to get into'', while newer stations mostly have soulless
designs focused on safety and vandal-proofing.
12.10pm
‘The Moyne community-based road focus group’, Trevor Greenburger, Director
of Physical Services, Moyne Shire Council.
The Moyne Council has a community-based road focus group that provides feedback
to Council about a range of matters. Community engagement is often spoken about
across local government but relatively few Councils have committed to embed the
process into Council operations. Trevor will discuss the operation of the process and
the outcomes to date.
12.45pm
1.30pm
Lunch
‘Reflections of a career in local government asset management’, Natalie Kent.
2.05pm
2.40pm
3.10pm
Natalie Kent has been working with Queensland Councils for many years, in her role
with the Queensland Local Government Association, to support the ongoing
improvement of asset management and other practices. Natalie will describe her
journey and reflect on what has worked well and not so well.
‘Driverless cars are not far away’, Ian Webb, CEO, Roads Australia.
The smartphone has delivered the greatest change in consumer transport to date
delivering immediate insights about traffic flow and congestion. But that is only the tip
of the iceberg in terms of what is possible in the future. Ian Webb is a fan of
driverless vehicle technology but believes that car companies have yet to grasp the
prospect of their business model being entirely blown apart by such technologies. He
says that the driverless car would “do away with the need to own a car” instead
allowing cloud style car-as-a-service where consumers summoned a car to take
them to a destination and paid accordingly. Webb said that the industry’s current
focus was not on driverless cars, rather on connected vehicles delivering some if not
all the benefits technology could generate for the sector.
‘The new spatial world and how it is helping to improve decision-making’,
David Moore, Policy Analyst, VicRoads.
VicRoads is breaking new ground with their infrastructure mapping methodologies
and a range of stakeholders, including Councils, will gain the benefits of the
transformation. David will explain the journey and how it can benefit Councils and
communities.
Close
Who should attend?
Councillors, CEOs, Directors, Managers (asset, service, financial, sustainability, risk, corporate) as well as
stakeholders and consultants.
Cost:
$693 (incl GST per person. No single day registrations are available.
To register:
For online registration and conference details go to www.mav.asn.au/events (click on ‘upcoming
events’ and scroll down to May 14).
Queries
jhennessy@mav.asn.au
Note
Program subject to change. See MAV website for latest version.
Accommodation
Suggest Rydges Melbourne, 186 Exhibition Street (03 96620511) or Mercure Hotel, 13 Spring Street,
Melbourne. Toll free: 1800 813442