As the water sector delivers once-in-a-generation infrastructure investment, bringing planners, designers, constructors and operators together from the outset is critical to delivering safer, smarter and more resilient long-term outcomes.
SUEZ is the Operational Leadership Partner of Ozwater’26, and we caught up with newly appointed Chief Operating Officer Catherine Port to discuss why early operational involvement and long-term partnership models are essential as the water sector delivers record investment programs.
Port said record-level investment creates a real opportunity to deliver lasting benefits for communities and the environment.
“Many utilities are grappling with record capital programs. These are essentially once-in-a-generation investments, well needed and a fabulous opportunity to shape the future of our communities and environment,” she said.
“It is really important that we get this right. We need to start with the end in mind, considering the long-term operation and contribution of these assets. The effects of those investments are things that we are all, as the community, going to be living with over the long term.”
With the demands of delivering such ambitious capital programs, Port questions whether commonly used delivery models are supporting the best whole-of-life outcomes, or whether they risk sacrificing long-term value.
“The dominance of design-and-construct contracts generally separates the people who design and build assets from the people who will spend decades running them,” Port said.
“Operators lose influence into design, and designers also lose access to the operational insights that can drive smarter, more digitally enabled long-term outcomes.
"In-house operations teams, under their own pressures and constraints, often have little capacity to engage. Short-term operations contracts, while they might help cover the risk of defect identification and rectification, do not incentivise a long-term view. You need people in the room who have skin in the game over the long-term, involved from inception.”
Having the voice of a long-term operations partner involved from the project creation phase brings real-world experience to the table in critical decisions.
“Everyone who contributes to the development of a water project brings a different perspective,” Port said.
“Planners, designers, constructors, operators – each one sees something the others can’t. Making sure those perspectives are brought together up front, and that the right people are in the room when the trade-offs are being made, matters enormously.”
Port said that while the sector has been aiming to move from CapEx-led decisions to TotEx-led decisions, in practice, this is challenging.
“The best way we can do that is to have everyone at the table and involved through project development, so the important trade-offs can be well informed, balanced and driving to reduce both CapEx and TotEx outcomes.”
The scale of current investment, Port said, makes those trade-offs more important than they have ever been.
“Utilities across the country are committing to capital programs that will define their cost base for the next 30 years and beyond. If we get the trade-offs wrong now, the costs over time can be significant and continue to compound.”
Port said bringing different perspectives together early is fundamental to realising more integrated and innovative ways of delivering solutions.
“When teams from different perspectives work together and challenge ideas, it often brings about greater innovation and different ways of doing things, leading to a better solution overall,” she said.
Operational experience is critical, particularly when it comes to planning how future upgrades are staged, integrating with live operations. The identification of non-CapEx solutions and rethinking redundancy, considering how the asset will actually be run, can also drive big benefits.
Port said the right foundations for evolving digital and automation solutions must be laid early.
“A lot of the potential value from digital tools, automation and data comes from how assets are configured and instrumented from the start,” she said.
“If we design and build without thinking about the capabilities and requirements needed in five or ten years’ time, we make it much harder – and more expensive – to unlock that value later.
“At a time when the sector is under pressure to innovate and maximise value, that collaboration becomes even more important.”
Port is clear that she is not advocating for a single commercial model.
“There is no ‘one-size-fits-all' model, and there are lessons to be learned from each project," she said.
"We have seen arrangements in Australia where the dialogue between operator and utility was limited, and customers didn't see the benefit they could have. The conversation worth having is how partnership models can evolve to fit the needs, risks, assets, and the community they serve.”
What does matter, in her view, is having a trusted long-term partner that can bring wider experience and a broader set of solutions to the table.
Port pointed to SUEZ’s long-running relationship with Sydney Water at the Prospect Water Filtration Plant as an example of what that can look like.
“Prospect was developed in the late 1990s as an integrated planning, design, construction and long-term operations partnership,” she said.
“Nearly 30 years later, it produces around 85% of Sydney’s drinking water. The plant has been through the Millennium Drought, the 2022 floods, evolving water quality regulation and rising climate resilience pressures. The partnership structure has made it possible to respond.”
“When the operator, the asset owner and the original delivery partner are still at the same table 30 years later, you can have honest conversations about what the asset needs.”
For Port, it comes back to one principle: “If we want lifecycle outcomes, we need lifecycle thinking from day one.”
Interested in taking a look at what’s on offer at Ozwater’26? Take a look at the program here.