Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Gillian Blythe: Water New Zealand CEO on the lessons that can be learned from the Moa Point disaster

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Gillian Blythe: Water New Zealand CEO on the lessons that can be learned from the Moa Point disaster · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We finally got some answers about what happened at Moor Point.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: You have multiple organisations, you have multiple people trying to
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: get to grips with a complex asset, and so I
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: think things kind of fell through the cracks.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: And no one really took responsibility for the whole thing,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: which was the problem to begin with. Basically, they also
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: only ever built half the station, deferred the other half,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: so when the site needed upgrades, it didn't have enough
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: backup to safely run, leading to the meltdown. Gillian Blythe.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: is Water New Zealand Chief Executive with us this morning,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the industry body. Gillian, good morning.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Are any of your members in this report?
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, they are.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: And I think the important thing that we need to
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: acknowledge for asset owners across New Zealand, and I don't
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: just mean water organisations or councils, I mean asset owners
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: full stop, is that there are lessons here. There were
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: lessons about the fact that there was, over decades, in
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: relation to the Moab Point plant, fragmented accountability and misaligned authority.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Are your members, you're talking about Veolia and Wellington Water,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the then Wellington Water?
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: And Wellington City Council. How did none of them know
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: who was in charge? I think you have to go
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: back that this was something that has been created over,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: you know, ever since I think it was 86 or
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: something when the conversations were being started about the Moor
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Point plant. And I think what you end up seeing,
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: and this is highlighted in the report, is that you
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: end up normalising things. When you've got that fragmented authority,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: fragmented accountability, and you're not clear.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's not fragmented though, is it? It's not fragmented. The
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: report says very clearly who is in charge. There is
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: a company that has been set up to manage the assets.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I understand that there is a set of, you know,
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: there's an asset owner, there's an asset operator, and there's
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: a contractor. All of those make absolute beautiful sense. But
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: it's about whether you are adopting international best practice in
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: your models for asset management and identification of risk. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: if over a number of years, and in this case
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: we're talking decades, you have had limited risk visibility and
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: you have structural underinvestment and you've had weak asset stewardship,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: then you end up having problem on problem on problem.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But whose job is it? Okay, so there's three players here.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Whose job is it to warn about, oh, there could
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: be a flood? Do you think?
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: There will be, well, you've got to set, given that
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: you identified right at the beginning that the plant was
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: built not to its full capacity. So there is issues
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: that you would have had in terms of the asset
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: owner needed to understand that, the person who is operating it,
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: and then the contractor as well.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: But this is part of the problem, Gillian. You're saying
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: everybody has responsibility for it, and the problem is that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: therefore no one has responsibility for it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: And so what you need to be able to do,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: and this is what's highlighted very much in this report,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: and this is why I'm saying this has got relevance
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: for asset owners throughout the country, is that you have
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: to understand and move away from asset compliance-focused contract management.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: You need to be able to ensure that you have
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: clear and appropriate enterprise and operational risk management so that
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: you understand your risk. you quantify them, you forecast them,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: you link it to decision-making, you make sure that funding
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: and service levels are there. And I guess one of
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: the things that I think is really important here is
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: that you've got to have.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Can I just be honest? You've just said a whole
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of things that have gone completely over my head.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, and I think this is part of the problem.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: You don't need to over... You just need to simplify things.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Who's in charge... Who's responsible for telling you something could flood?
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: That person tells that person and that person does something
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: about it. Quite simple, no?
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: So that is, as you described so simply, yes. But
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: when I tell you that something is wrong, you need to,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: or if I tell you something is okay, you need
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: to quiz me. You need to challenge and have that conversation.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: And then you need to say, what's the action as
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: a consequence of that? Do we need to spend some money?
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Do we need to do a set of warnings? What
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: is the service level that we can expect?
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Someone needs to ring an alarm. Gillian, we have to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: leave it there. I appreciate your time this morning. Thank
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you so much for being with me. Gillian Blyth, Water
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: New Zealand Chief Executive.