Environmental monitoring changes in Council

Council’s Environment and Policy management has confirmed its new strategy for environmental monitoring in the region, which includes bringing some functions back in-house and tendering lab testing to an external company.

“For 16 years we have contracted our monitoring and reporting functions out to Gisborne company Hydro Technologies Limited (HTL),” says environmental and regulatory services group manager, Kevin Strongman.

“Council’s long term plan to keep rates under 2% average increase for the next three years and keep debt low, means we needed to review the way we perform our environmental monitoring function and to be able to deliver the same or better level of service more efficiently.”

“we had investigated bringing monitoring back in-house, just as a majority of other regional councils do, and we determined there were overall better outcomes to doing the work internally.

Shared services science manager Lois Easton says “Six new specialist jobs are being created meaning that Council can respond better to changing regulations and requirements from central government, as well as increased requirements like for freshwater management that will be required in the near future.

“We’ll be able to rapidly allocate staff resources to respond to extraordinary events, including outside normal hours, and able to schedule work with other Council functions in remote areas.

“It will allow us to access National Environmental Monitoring Standards that only regional councils can join into, the ability to increase the range of sampling we do at no extra costs, a better understanding of field work conditions and more comprehensive feedback,” says Ms Easton.

The lab testing function would still need to be sourced by an external supplier and was put out to public tender.

Three tenders were received. “Two were from companies outside the region and one from HTL,” says Mr Strongman.

“Our policy for awarding contracts includes criteria for using local suppliers, in this case the local supplier price was more than double what was offered by the other 2 tenderers and the buy local factor did not change the ranking of the tenderers

“The cost difference of going with the local supplier would have been the equivalent of adding a further 0.5% increase to rates.

“It doesn’t make the decision any less hard, we’ve had a 16 year relationship with HTL which was originally set up with council staff members in 1999,

“We’re disappointed that they weren’t the successful tenderer on this occasion and realise it will be a difficult time for the business.”

ENDS

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