Tauranga City Council Chief Digital Officer Allan Lightbourne says working closely with other councils to deliver better systems and technology has delivered real value to the organisation and city.

In 2020, Tauranga City Council (TCC) had great success with the implementation of its new SAP ERP system as a copy of the Auckland Council’s SAP platform.  

“This initiative reduced cost, reduced risk and provided Tauranga with a proven base to move forward,” says Lightbourne. “The success of this project reinforced the belief that new and innovative ways of achieving business outcomes would deliver real value to our organisation and city.”

That success prompted TCC and neighbouring council Western Bay of Plenty to move forward with a shared water maintenance contract.  

“Our initial internal planning indicated that we were up for a $4-5 million build process internally to create a new shared waters maintenance platform.  With all the risks and challenges that a new build would represent," Lightbourne says. "At the same time, we had been engaging with Watercare for a few years, learning from their agile practices, the way they procured and implemented their ERP platform, their customer journey mapping approach and also the way that they prioritised work with their executive."

That deep relationship with Watercare and the positive experience with the Auckland Council SAP implementation a year earlier allowed the team to think about the opportunity to innovate once more.

For this initiative they used Watercare’s new ERP platform as the foundation for TCC and Western Bays' shared maintenance contract. 

As discussions progressed this concept took a step further than the Auckland Council project and Western Bay and TCC moved to a shared platform architecture with Watercare.

“By the time we had made these big decisions, the timeline for go-live on our new waters maintenance contract was only months away,” says Lightbourne. “So, with only a few months to go, and led by Watercare’s team, we stood up a shared agile programme, across Watercare, TCC, Western Bay and Downer (our newly appointed waters contract partner).”

This project delivered value to all of the organisations involved, according to Lightbourne, including:

• Embedding agile ways of working into the waters functions in TCC and Western Bay
• Successfully delivering a large change programme in a very aggressive timeline
• Creating the foundation for an innovative multi-year joint maintenance contract
• A reference point for one possible architecture for the future Three Waters Reform Technology approach
• A shared platform for waters assets, services, maintenance, lifecycle, meter reading, and monitoring
• Improving both rate-payer service and value in the Bay of Plenty region

“The most important achievement of this project though is genuinely shared ownership and execution across TCC, Western Bay, Watercare and through both the business and IT functions working hand in hand,” says Lightbourne.

He also credits the work of the CIO at Watercare, Rebecca Chenery, and the CIO at Western Bay of Plenty Council, Marion Dowd, to help achieve this result.

The Tauranga City Council is now exploring other collaborations with other councils, including a shared finance platform and a shared HR platform.