MRWA Portal expanded to include nine additional water corporations
The Intelligent Water Networks (IWN) funded and South East Water managed Melbourne Retail Water Agencies (MRWA) Product Web Portal expansion is due to be launched on Thursday 16th May at 6pm.
The MRWA Portal is a collaboration of South East Water, Yarra Valley Water and City West Water and as per the aims of the IWN’s Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing program, has been about joint benefits to the participating water corporations. Now access has been expanded to nine other regional corporations: Barwon Water, Central Highlands Water, Coliban Water, Gippsland Water, Goulburn Valley Water, Lower Murray Water, South Gippsland Water, Wannon Water and Western Water.
The MRWA Product Web Portal enables users to search and obtain details of adopted industry standards, products and materials currently accepted by the corporations for the installation of pipeline systems and associated Infrastructure works. The MRWA do not give preference to any particular make or type of product included in the portal and may include additional equivalent products in accordance with their product appraisal programs.
This project has the potential to be of huge benefit for the additional participating water corporations, who currently don’t have a consistent way to identify to stakeholders accepted products or manage them in house and therefore don’t share their learnings with the rest of the Victorian water industry.
Some corporations run an accepted product list on excel, while others refer to City West Water’s list of approved items. Access to this portal should change that and save time and effort for a whole cast of staff throughout the industry.
Project manager for the portal expansion, Adam Glasson from Goulburn Valley Water, explained: “By having one central location for approved products of multiple Victorian water corporations, we can save time and effort not only for internal staff managing these lists but also for consultants, developers, contractors and suppliers who need to access these lists.
“Having one list available to be accessed from in the office or out in the field can only improve the level of reliability and quality of assets we receive.”
Talking about the expansion, Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing program lead Michael Thomas added: “The upgraded MRWA web portal has gone live following several months hard work by the South East Water project delivery team (led by Scott Phillips) with oversight by Adam Glasson from Goulburn Valley Water.
“The expanded portal enables users from nine additional participating Victorian Agencies – Barwon Water, Central Highlands, Coliban Water, Gippsland Water, Goulburn Valley Water, Lower Murray Water, South Gippsland Water, Wannon Water and Western Water - to search and obtain details of products, standards and materials currently accepted by Melbourne Retail Water Agencies.
“The MRWA project is another example of collaborative action by IWN that will enable the Victorian Water sector to operate more efficiently and responsively to customer and industry needs.”