Regional Recycling & Infrastructure - June 2013
By: Regional Infrastructure Projects Coordinator, Scott Britton...
It was a rather busy start to the month, and that pace has been maintained for each and every one of the 31 days. A few of the happenings around the place which have kept me busy over the course of the month include:
- Regional Recycling Opportunities meeting held in Cairns on 1 May
- Regional Reseal Tender Briefing held in Cairns on 7 May
- Regional Road Group Technical Committee tour and meeting held in Cooktown on 15 May
- Tour of the Cooktown Waste Transfer Facility on 16 May
- Visits to various councils regarding Asset Management and Recycling Opportunities
The Regional Road Group Technical Committee held its final meeting for the financial year in Cooktown prior to the IPWEAQ North Queensland Branch Conference. The good news story here, as Darlene has already mentioned, is that the TIDS expenditure levels are high! This places our region in a strong position for the mooted changes which are coming with the 'One Bucket' Methodology during the course of the next financial year. For more about the RRG, please see Gerard's article.
Regional Recycling Opportunities
A working group of waste officers held a meeting in Cairns on 1 May to commence the process of exploring regional opportunities for recycling. Following this meeting, I have commenced the process of understanding the issues of each council to learn more about their existing practices. As part of this, I have been collecting the hard data for collation into a regional snapshot of what is happening on the ground. Even with this data collection process partially completed, there are already a number of strong themes starting to emerge. A second workshop to review this collated data and identify any potential 'low lying fruit', as a starting point, will be scheduled for late July before reporting back to the FNQROC Board in August.
At this point I would like to say a big thank you to the council officers whom I have met on both the asset management and waste management fronts. Over the next month I will be continuing the rounds on both fronts – in the coming days I will be contacting those councils I have yet to visit to setup the next round of meetings.
Asset Management
While on Asset Management, I will be attending a half day workshop on the new accounting standard AASB 13 Fair Value Measurement on Friday 21 June in Brisbane. This will no doubt be a topic which will spark some interesting conversations around the place. I will provide an overview back in next month's newsletter.