Photo: RNZ/ Rob Dixon
The breadth of weaknesses in Wellington Water's management systems is being laid bare in a tender for a $37 million urgent overhaul.
It shows that the agency has a dozen "capabilities today with no formal system support".
That included basics like budgeting and maintenance management. Maintenance has been a huge bugbear for the agency.
The plan is to fix that with a sweeping technology upgrade as a new council-controlled organisation takes over in line with the government's 'Local Water Done Well' policy.
But it will not come cheap, and is on top of actual network fixes like new pipes and sewage plants that work well.
The $37.5m was an "initial estimated cost" that would be reviewed further down the track.
However, chief corporate services officer Wayne Maxwell said the fix was urgent.
"When it comes to technology systems, Wellington Water is far behind where we need to be," he told RNZ in a statement.
All councils had till a month ago to submit water service delivery plans to Internal Affairs to check they would work.
Quite a few are banding together to form new council-controlled organisations that, being bigger, can borrow more and access more expertise. Wellington's councils plan to have 'Metro Water'.
With that looming, Wellington Water's other top priority is to lessen its over-reliance on outside contractors, who an inquiry found it had been paying up to three times too much for some repairs.
The tech weaknesses contributed to that: The tender documents showed among the gaps were systems for managing outside contractors in the field.
Also missing were basic systems for budgeting and forecasting, inventory management, construction consents and compliance, land development and customer relationship management.
Maintenance management was another hole.
"In some cases, the technology systems we need are lacking altogether," Maxwell said.
"We are dependent on old systems that are in urgent need of replacement, or we rely on the use of systems belonging to our shareholding councils or contractors."
Photo: RNZ / Reece Baker
Years of poor performance have been punctuated by regular sewage and water eruptions out of old pipes, and massive leaks that more recently have begun being plugged.
The tender closed early last month and bids were being evaluated now.
Time was ticking to fix an "unsustainable [system] and does not deliver value for money for our customers".
"While our programme of work and responsibility has grown over the past 10 years, the investment in core technology systems that support this work has not."
Now, financial sustainability, improved asset management and regulatory compliance were demanded. "This has added urgency," said Maxwell.
The tech overhaul was being funded from debt that would transfer to the new entity, Metro Water.
"In recognition of the urgency", the regional council had confirmed funding for the 2025-26 portion of the overhaul.
The other metro councils would pay the 2025-26 interest costs of the debt through the bulk water levy they pay annually to the regional council.
Wellington's situation suggests other new water entities face shouldering heavy IT debt on top of the eye-watering costs of running and fixing old water systems, with all that landing on ratepayers and water users.
Multiple tender documents refer to the new tech system having to enable water metering.
Wellington's metropolitan councils want 135,000 household meters installed in the next five or six years.
The councils have said that while water bills will inevitably rise over the years it takes to fix the infrastructure, the rise would be 30 percent less than what households would face under the current splintered model.
