Empowering Coliban Water’s Path to Transformation 

Coliban Water plays a vital role in delivering clean, fresh water and reliable wastewater services to 49 towns throughout North-Central Victoria. They supply water and undertake the essential management, maintenance, and operation of 35 reservoirs and water storage facilities. Their unwavering commitment ensures that the residents of northern Victoria have access to the highest quality water resources and the necessary infrastructure to handle these services effectively.

Coliban Water has embarked on an exciting journey towards digital and process transformation. Recognising the challenges inherent in reshaping the inner workings of a business, the dedicated team at Coliban Water has demonstrated a firm commitment to this endeavour, knowing that the rewards are significant.

To initiate this transformational journey and align with their newly established Strategy to Execution Framework (S2E), Coliban Water proactively sought to implement a new Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool – OnePlan. In pursuit of this goal, Coliban Water enlisted the expertise of Exco Partners, who have collaborated closely with the exceptional individuals at Coliban Water to spearhead this transformation. Through their partnership, Exco Partners has provided all the necessary information and training, ensuring that this crucial stage of the transformation is as streamlined and straightforward as possible.

Approach

To solidify the assumption that OnePlan would address the transformational needs of this project, a few people at Exco travelled up to Coliban Water’s Bendigo office to run a two-day workshop.

Throughout this workshop, Exco conducted a series of interactive activities that helped drive high levels of engagement. Comparative psychological techniques were utilised to uncover in-depth thoughts and feelings that the people working at Coliban had towards the existing tools and processes and what they would expect to change going forward.

Critical pain points were identified, and solutions were devised to ensure that these roadblocks could be cleared. Even though the workshop was run for the purpose of understanding what everyone wanted out of their new PPM tool. The openness of all the people at Coliban meant that various people had their chance to be heard and express what they felt was important to them and the company’s future.

Exco’s design team created an informational pack based on these workshops that was then presented back to Coliban Water. The pack included visual representations of specific feelings towards different components of the projects, in-depth reviews, and summarised notes of the many in-person conversations that took place.

Development

Exco Partners collaborated closely with Coliban Water to successfully implement a robust solution encompassing a range of essential features and services. The implementation process involved the customisation of templates and configurations to accommodate diverse project types, including Capital, ICT, and corporate projects.

A seamlessly embedded project management framework, a streamlined budget bidding process, and approval workflows were integrated into the system. The solution incorporated end-to-end views through integrations and PowerBI reporting to enhance project visibility. Rigorous user testing, comprehensive training, and efficient onboarding procedures ensured a seamless transition to the new system. As well as all this, meticulous data migration procedures were executed to facilitate the seamless transfer of relevant information.