Champions Profile: Corey Grapentin from Wannon Water
Corey Grapentin from Wannon Water has just started his time with IWN as Champion. This is his background, and what he hopes to get and give back to the program.
Can you give us a bit of your personal background?
South Australian born and bred (don’t hold that against me) but have been living in South West Victoria for the past 20 odd years. It’s a beautiful part of the country.
I actually live with my wife and two children Leala (eight) and Grayson (six) in a small rural area outside Warrnambool with no water or sewer services. It’s small enough that my children don’t have to cross a road to walk to school. We love getting out in the environment. Whether that be camping in one of the many areas around Warrnambool, heading to the beach or just getting out for a walk together.
And what is your professional background?
I started my career out in retail and moved into business management early. I always had a passion for effective and efficient workflows and best practice methodologies which complemented me completing my Masters of Enterprise at Melbourne University. All this private industry experience eventually led me into consulting and project management work in public health.
What started out as a temporary contract to redesign the front of house of our local hospital, turned into nearly 10 years working with regional and state-wide health services. Working in health had me oversee many projects from region wide service delivery, IT projects, procurement to clinical and theatre redesign.
In 2018 Wannon Water advertised my current position, this opportunity and the organisation grabbed my interest for a change into a new industry. The synergies with water and health made this decision an easy one.
What inspired you to want to become a champion?
Not long after starting at Wannon Water we had a roadshow where Michael Thomas spoke about his journey with IWN and how it assisted him being new to the water industry. This prompted me to get involved with IWN. Having had exposure over the past 12 months and involvement with some project works in this time made this decision easy when the opportunity arose internally for a new champ at Wannon Water
What IWN program interests you the most?
Collaboration and Knowledge sharing is definitely one of my priority areas. Coming from private sector, where working at different sites around the country didn’t change the way you did business, I was surprised moving into government how segregated industries are. Every hospital and or health services operates differently. Every water authority operates differently. This became even more apparent when probing the WSAA benchmarking. Standardisation is much less common, yet we all have similar challenges. Often it’s just making the time to talk and work with peers to have a mutual outcomes on projects and sharing this information more widely.
What are you hoping to get out of your new role?
My aim is to gain a broader understanding of the water sector. To be involved and exposed to projects and information I would otherwise not have the opportunity to in my role alone.
And if anything, what do you want to give back to IWN?
I am hoping my background in project management, multi stakeholder engagement, and collaboration can assist in sharing best practice and standardised processes across the water industry.