National awards for water projects

TWO Geelong projects have received national recognition at the 2021 Australian Water Awards.

Barwon Water’s customer experience program won the Australian Water

Association’s first Customer Experience Award and Melbourne Water won the Water Industry Safety Excellence Award for its pioneering confined space entry simulator, which was developed in Geelong.

The simulator is a worldfirst safety training tool developed in partnership with Deakin University’s CADET Virtual Reality Training and Simulation Research Lab.

Barwon Water’s nomination for the Customer Experience Award included the improvements to its support program, call handling, and communications and engagement with its customers and community.

Managing director Tracey Slatter said every staff member made an “I care, We care” personal commitment to how they could make a difference in their day-to-day work.

“We’re also working hard to continuously improve what we do to make it easier for customers to connect with us as well as working more efficiently so we can continue to keep bills affordable,” Ms Slatter said.

Barwon Water was also a finalist in the Safety

Excellence Award, for its mental health and wellbeing strategy, and the Research and Development Excellence Award, for its involvement in the sewage surveillance.

The national winners were announced at the OzWater’21 gala dinner in Adelaide.