SA WATER OPERATIONAL AND SERVICE CONTRACTS

202 Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (15 March 2011). With respect to the Report of the Auditor-General 2009-10, page 1449—Operational and Service Contracts—What payments were made by SA Water to entities external to the SA Government and in each case, what was the name of the entity and what services were provided?

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton—Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for the River Murray, Minister for Water): I am advised that:

As outlined in the report of the Auditor-General 2009-10, page 1449, the Operational and Service Contracts spend in 2009-10 totalled $131.3 million. This included costs incurred by SA Water from a number of contracts as follows:

The agreement between United Water International and SA Water is for the management, operation and maintenance of Adelaide's metropolitan water and wastewater systems.

Hewlett Packard contracts related to Server Management, Database Management, Storage Area Network Management, Hardware Maintenance and maintenance of the customer billing system.

Operators of water/wastewater treatment plants in regional areas including the Victor Harbor Wastewater Treatment Plant, the ten Water Treatment plants under the Water Treatment and Economic Development Agreement and the water treatment plants near nominated townships along the River Murray under the Country Water Quality Improvement Project.

Delivery of external projects on behalf of other State Government Agencies such as the Lake Albert pumping program, Barrage Environmental Impact Statement, South Coorong Lagoon Pumping program as well as the provision of water and wastewater services to remote communities. All of these costs are fully recoverable.

Other major contract services relate to over 900 individual contracts which include:

Land management and preventative maintenance primarily for fire prevention and the maintenance of critical flood warning stations.

Regional and metropolitan facilities management contract and regional security contract. The security contracts are for the provision of security services, primarily guards and patrols, for key SA Water sites.

Regional Operations utilised 701 suppliers which required specialist skills or expertise on activities such as wastewater treatment sludge removal and chemical sewer cleaning. Suppliers were also used across Regional Operations to provide services such as earth moving and excavation services for use in restoring infrastructure failures, large scale weed spraying services and fencing services for land management works.

Contract services to support SA Water applications and systems including customer systems, financial systems, works management systems, payroll systems, mail management systems, as well as undertaking an information services strategic review.

Customer Services related activities including billing and collection of monies from SA Water customers, reading meters, bill printing expenses, credit management, Dial before You Dig, payments to individual plumbers for their claims and call centre overflow and customer surveys.

Further information on contracts exceeding $0.5 million may be found at the following government web site:

https://www.tenders.sa.gov.au/tenders/contract/list.do?action=contract-view