6 June 2013

ACTEW Water shedding technical jobs

| johnboy
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The ABC informs us that ACTEW water is pulling back from 35 to 25 senior operational managers:

David Smith from the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers says it is a big loss.

“This is more than one in four of the senior technical experts in ACTEW,” he said.

“The concern that we have are the ones that you’re going to lose are the ones with the most experience and expertise. We’re projecting hundreds of years of engineering expertise are about to leave the organisation.”

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HiddenDragon12:30 pm 06 Jun 13

curmudgery said :

And my guess is this will be the sequence of events:

Get rid of valuable expertise (at great expense) for overestimated short-term savings.
Discover shortage of expertise.
Outsource expertise (at great expense) and provide their training.
Reorganise internal operations to accommodate outsourced ‘partners’.
Employ new admin people to guide, refine and evaluate new structure.
Print and distribute new 4-colour ‘moving forward’ glossies to all customers.
Raise prices due to unprecedented demand for services (time this with peak summer water usage).
Employ admin people to create Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
Evaluate results of Surveys positively.
Actively seek congratulations.

I believe such things have happened in other jurisdictions, and the ACT public sector has a remarkable instinct for reinventing the wheel (rather than learning from the mistakes of others), so all of that is highly likely. In the meantime, the people responsible for those lavishly produced info-ganda booklets, which come with the eye-popping water and electric bills, will doubtless prosper and multiply.

Hey, they gotta do something to pay for Mark’s salary! haha!

And my guess is this will be the sequence of events:

Get rid of valuable expertise (at great expense) for overestimated short-term savings.
Discover shortage of expertise.
Outsource expertise (at great expense) and provide their training.
Reorganise internal operations to accommodate outsourced ‘partners’.
Employ new admin people to guide, refine and evaluate new structure.
Print and distribute new 4-colour ‘moving forward’ glossies to all customers.
Raise prices due to unprecedented demand for services (time this with peak summer water usage).
Employ admin people to create Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
Evaluate results of Surveys positively.
Actively seek congratulations.

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