old knowledge, new ideas - sydney water...old knowledge, new ideas reviving sydney water’s...
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Old knowledge, new ideasReviving Sydney Water’s engineering community for better customer outcomes
ChallengeSydney Water has a history of almost 130 years of engineering practice, and is an employer of over 2,500 staff, with approximately one fifth being engineers, spanning across teams and generations. Inspired by a predominantly mature, experienced workforce and enthusiastic graduate engineers, the concept of an engineering community was established to connect, build and retain engineering knowledge.
The benefits of bringing experts together to learn about new internal and external initiatives, discuss challenges, collaborate on activities will improve our engineering knowledge and practices and ultimately result in better outcomes for our customers.
ApproachThe Engineering Community of Practice (CoP) was established by the committee through a staged approach. The Engineering CoP we established picks up where the organisation’s previous Engineering Club (which ran from 1936 to 2000) left off. In the first stage, a core committee of individuals developed a charter, aligning the community to Sydney Water's corporate objectives of being a world class organisation, with a high performing culture, and maintaining customers at the heart. The charter also set out the governance structures for the community and KPIs on membership and activity for CoP monitoring and reporting. Executive sponsors were identified from the two areas of business with the largest proportion of engineers. Once the CoP had developed the foundational documents and identified the key stakeholders, awareness and information about the CoP was primarily shared through word-of-mouth and as membership grew, Sydney Water’s enterprise collaboration and communication tools: Yammer, Skype and Sharepoint were utilised.
ImplementationA kick-off forum was advertised using internal communications media and held in February 2017. The agenda introduced attendees to the purpose and motivation of the community, the charter and a workshop to collect participant feedback on the CoP structure, operations and plans, in addition to their details which formed the basis for the membership database.
Following analysis of the feedback, six technical sub-groups were formed: Treatment Plants, Networks, Integrated Water Cycle Management, Hydraulics, Asset Management and Professional Practice (see diagram below). The sub-groups have been designed as autonomous groups with leaders, coordinators and members running these without ongoing committee direction.
Since its formation, the CoP has held quarterly forums to share information on general water engineering, whilst the sub-communities meet more frequently to share information and workshops on their specific topics. As well as sharing information, the CoP and sub-communities enable members to bring "wicked problems" to leverage the broader wisdom of the group. The forums also allow for cross-team and cross-divisional networking and for collaboration opportunities to be identified.
Lessons LearnedThe identification of engineers and extending our membership to those outside our two largest offices has been challenging. The geographically dispersed nature of engineering work has required communications through word-of-mouth and ensuring remote communications and online access to centralised resources is provided. We have through these mechanisms attracted over 100 members to the engineering CoP and we are seeking to double our growth in our 2nd year.
We have leveraged existing systems like Skype for Business, however there is scope for improvement in engaging with remote workers. Sharing of documentation, findings and learnings is also difficult as members are from divisions across the business. We are using a mix of platforms for communication and documentation and are still working towards integrating these with our existing document control systems.
OutcomesThe Engineering CoP has been set up for success with the development of a charter, governance, sub groups, online platforms for documentation and communication, membership list and metrics to quantify engagement and representation of the CoP. Qualitative wins so far have included connections made on projects across different stages of the planning lifecycle, problem-solving of a question around pressure reducing valves at an Asset Management meeting, and providing a forum for rapid dissemination of an engineering assurance framework.
Future VisionThe future vision for the CoP is to be a voice for engineers in the business, providing pathways to support professional development of engineers, reinforcing knowledge management, mentoring and inspiring Sydney Water’s engineers to contribute to world class performance and a high performing culture to produce the best outcomes for our customers. We also aspire to work with CoPs from other parts of the water industry to broaden our knowledge base and increase our capabilities.
Authors: Emily Ryan, Tiffany Chen, Elline Camilet, Gino Iori, Ken Wiggins, Mark McGowan, Luke Walsh, Fiona MackenzieThe authors of the paper would like to acknowledge the support and contributions of our sponsors, Emma Pryor and Gary Hurley
The sponsors are the executive advocates for the community of practice
Knowledgemanagementcoach
Secretariat:administrating the committee and organising the events
Treatment sub-group
Networkssub-group
IWCMsub-group
Hydraulicssub-group
Asset mgmtsub-group
Practicesub-group
Chair:run meetings and champion the advancement of the community
Management representative:provide strategic and leadership advice
Liveable citiessponsor
Customer deliverysponsor
Engineering CoP forums: Common engineering topics
The CoP committee: Organising the CoP
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OLD KNOWLEDGE, NEW IDEAS: REVIVING SYDNEY WATER’S ENGINEERING COMMUNITY FOR BETTER CUSTOMER OUTCOMES
Emily Ryan 1, Tiffany Chen 1, Elline Camilet 1, Gino Iori 1, Ken Wiggins 1,Mark McGowan 1,
Luke Walsh 1, Fiona Mackenzie 1
1. Sydney Water Corporation, Sydney, NSW, Australia
KEYWORDS
Engineering, Community of Practice, Knowledge Transfer,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Sydney Water is an employer of over 2,500 staff with approximately a third being engineers, spanning across
generations. With many in our workforce either in their early career, or nearing retirement, a new way of
working and managing knowledge transfer amongst our engineering community was needed. A group of
people from different parts of Sydney Water worked together to re-establish an Engineering Community of
Practise as a space for the engineers of the organisation to share and learn from one another. This also created
the opportunity to collaboratively tap into the water and wastewater engineering capability spread across the
organisation.
INTRODUCTION
Sydney Water is an employer of over 2,500 staff with approximately a third being engineers, spanning across
generations. With many in our workforce either in their early career, or nearing retirement, a new way of
working and managing knowledge transfer amongst our engineering community was needed. Further, in such
a large and geographically dispersed water utility, how can we leverage the tacit engineering knowledge of our
discrete teams and businesses? With over 125 years of history in the engineering practice, Sydney Water was
primed to revive what was once an engineering ‘club’, as an engineering Community of Practice (CoP) for a
new generation of engineers.
YEAR CASE STUDY WAS IMPLEMENTED
2017 to Present
CASE STUDY SUMMARY
The objectives of the Engineering CoP was to develop a forum for engineers to share knowledge and learnings,
and collaboratively solve problems from across different areas of operations. To develop the CoP, a core group
produced a charter, sought sponsors, established a virtual library, commenced quarterly forums and built a
grassroots membership base. Six months out from the formal kick-off, the CoP has over 110 registered
members, formed six specialist sub-groups, shared new approaches, resolved asset management concerns,
and importantly made connections and collaborations between business units amongst other achievements.
CASE STUDY DETAIL
The issue
Often in a large water utility teams that are seperated by distance and discipline will duliplicate work due to
lack of communication channels. This lack can result in a waste of time and money potentially leading to worse
outcomes for business and the customer.These situations can be avoided by providing opportunties for water
and wastewater engineers to collaborate.
Approach
The Engineering CoP was established by the committee through a staged approach In the first stage, a core
committee of individuals developed a charter, aligning the community to Sydney Water's corporate objectives
of being a world class organisation, with a high performing culture, and maintaining customers at the heart.
The charter also set out governance structures for the community and KPIs on membership and activity for
CoP monitoring and reporting. Executive sponsors were identified from the two business with the largest
proportion of engineers. Once the CoP had developed the foundational documents and identified the key
stakeholders awareness and information about the CoP was primarily shared through word of mouth and as
membership grew, Sydney Water’s enterprise collaboration and communication tools: Yammer, Skype and
Sharepoint were utilised
Activities and their implementation
The kick-off forum was advertised using internal communication media and held in February 2017. The agenda
introduced attendees to the purpose and motivation of the community, the charter and a workshop to collect
participant feedback on the CoP structure, operations and plans, in addition to their details which formed the
basis for the membership database.
Following analysis of the feedback, six technical sub-communities were formed: Treatment Plants, Networks,
Integrated Water Cycle Mangement, Hydraulics, Asset Management and Professional Practice (see Figure 1).
The sub-communities have been designed as autonomous groups with leaders, coordinators and members
running these without ongoing committee direction.
Since its formation, the CoP has held quarterly forums to share information on general water engineering,
whilst the sub-communities meet more frequently to share information and workshops on their specific topics.
As well as sharing information, the CoP and sub-communities enable members to bring "wicked problems" to
leverage the broader wisdom of the group. The forums also allow for cross-team and cross-divisional
networking and for collaboration opportunities to be identified.
Outcomes and measurable impacts
In developing the charter, metrics to quantify engagement and representation in the CoP were selected. These
included: membership numbers, meeting attendance, tracking of relevant demography data, and tracking of
qualitative ‘wins’ and success stories from the CoP.
In June 2017, we commenced tracking membership, attendance and demographics and we will be monitoring
these. Qualitative wins so far have included connections made on projects across different stages of the
planning lifecycle, problem-solving of a question around pressure reducing valves at an Asset Management
meeting, and providing a forum for rapid dissemination of an engineering assurance framework.
Sustainability of the CoP
The grassroots nature, and participant-led focus of the CoP has enabled it to maintain momentum in the eight
months since inception and outcomes are expected to be sustainable over the long term. By running the group
through lunch and learn sessions, and focusing on digital communication channels, costs associated to
resourcing and disruptions to particpants ordinary work has been minimised. These indirect costs to the
business, although small, are expected to be offset by avoided costs on projects, and informal employee
development.
Lessons learnt and critical success factors
The identification of engineers and extending our membership to those outside of our two largest offices has been challenging. The geographically dispersed nature of engineering work has required communications through word of mouth and ensuring remote communications and online access to centralised resources is provided. While we’ve been able to leverage off existing systems like Skype for Business, there is scpoe for improvement
in engaging with remote workers. Sharing of documentation, findings and learnings is also difficult as members
are from divisions across the business. We are using a mix of platforms for communication and documentation
and are still working towards intergrating these with our existing document control systems.
Success factors to this point have been largely anecdotal – being told by members about ‘wins’ that have come
about through greater understanding and experience gained from new networks and workshops. We’re
working to find better ways to measure these as performance KPIs.
Future vision
The future vision for the CoP is to be a voice for engineers in the business, providing pathways to support
professional development of engineers, reinforcing knowledge management, mentoring and inspiring Sydney
Water’s engineers to contribute to world class performance and a high performing culture to produce the best
outcomes for our customers.
Figure 1: Governance of the Engineering Community of Practice