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00:00:00 Councillor Jurisevic: Afternoon and good morning, welcome to the Nursing Council Services and Organisation Committee meeting for Tuesday the 12th of April 2022. Before we begin, I'd like to pay my respects to the provincial owners of the land upon which we meet, the Kabi Kabi people, and pay respect to their elders past, present and emerging. Everyone who's in attendance, no apologies today. Item two, confirmation minutes. Can I get somebody to confirm the minutes of the last meeting? Councillor Wilkie, Secondary Councillor Stewart. No debate, no discussion. All in favour? Announce. Thank you. Item three is presentations. There are no presentations. Item four, deputations. None of those either today. So we'll move right on to item five, the reports for consideration of the committee. And we'll start with item one, contract. T64, Cooroy, Cooroy Creek Road replacement. Gentlemen, welcome to the table. We'll get Dennis to give us a bit of an overview on the item.
00:01:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, what we've done with the bridge, it's one of our bridge projects that we are replacing in the next years. We have been replaced a couple of bridges in the past. This one is next to be replaced, Cooroy Betty Creek Road bridge. What we've done, we went out to tender. We received a couple of very good respondents, response on that one. We held a tender review meeting and the evaluation panel nominates ARC as the successful tender for this project. As far as funding goes, there's some... Yeah, there are some, there were some gaps in funding. Mainly due to a saturated market. We all know that since the pandemic started, steel prices, material prices went sky high.
00:02:00 Yeah, this really, we couldn't foresee that we went out for grant funding in 2020. We didn't know at that stage that the price trend was going up. So now we're facing a very expensive construction market, although we need to replace the bridge in order to do proper asset maintenance and asset management. What we've done, we've looked at several options. One of the options that we propose, we discussed prior with management team, with the director of finance, with our infrastructure director. What we are proposing is to do a sort of shift in asset strategy on two bridges. We have the Cooraberry Creek Road bridge and we have Lawnville Road bridge. We have to have discussions. And what we believe is that the Lawnville Road bridge can be maintained for a bit longer.
00:03:00 So we would like to use, utilize part of that allocated council budget to this Cooraberry Creek Road bridge to fund the gap. Moreover, we would like to go to the federal government, and we already done it last week, just to get it in as locked as soon as possible to apply for more grant funding for this Cooraberry Creek Road bridge based on a 50-50 basis. Councillor Jurisevic: Any questions, Kim? Silence, no silence. Councillor Lorentson: I threw some questions at you during the week. Yes, yesterday. And if you don't mind, just for opportunity. For community, anyone that's listening to sort of understand. The Lawnville Road bridge, so the proposal in front of us is to reschedule that so that we can meet the shortfall with the Cooroy Beely Creek Road bridge replacement. My questions were, is the Lawnville Bridge Road, is it a high priority?
00:04:00 And what are the traffic counts? How many vehicles a day actually use the Lawnville Road bridge? And where is it located? Speaker 4: Yes. Do you want it to fly? You start. Perfect. Fill in. Yeah. Yeah. We've taken, the latest traffic counts were taken back in 2014. Unfortunately, we don't have more data since 2014. But for the Lawnville Road bridge in 2014, approximately 780 vehicles a day used that bridge. That's not really much for a bridge, but it's still a good amount of vehicles in the hinterland. Councillor Lorentson: Yeah. So why aren't the figures updated? Why do we only have data from 2014? It just seems like such a long time ago. Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah. So our priority has really been to get our delivery up and running. And after that, our priority was to get our design up and running and then our asset management
00:05:00 plans. And so it's really been on resourcing. Issue. And we've had a high turnover of employees. And it's hard to get that succession of being able to program and get traffic counts done regularly. So it's probably on a more of an as-need basis, Alex? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So basically, the way we've been doing it recently is for when we get a project request for a study around a certain area, we'll go out and do a suite of traffic counts around that. And so this one, obviously, we had a previous count. So we probably should have had an up-to-date one. But yeah, that was sort of indicative that 2014 traffic is close enough. It's not like it was a 20-year-ago sort of count. So that one, it should be sort of close enough. Councillor Jurisevic: And there isn't a lot of extra development or anything around that area that would constitute Speaker 2: more traffic? I would definitely say there would be more. But as for that, I probably couldn't say how much more at this point.
00:06:00 Councillor Wilkie: Well, it'd be fair to say that your assessment, condition assessment of the asset is a critical factor here. Speaker 2: Absolutely. This is basically... Councillor Wilkie: As opposed to traffic counts. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So effectively, the decision we've gone with is because of the condition. And we've done level two reports and then also contracted out level three bridge inspections, which are the more detailed ones. And we're still well within the window of sort of maintaining that asset out rather than replacing it. It was just the opportunity for 50-50 grant funding that presented itself that it made that, I suppose, cost benefit ratio look a lot more appealing that we replace it rather than maintain it. So... Back in 2020, that was. Yeah. So... And yeah, basically. So the availability of grant funding made it... Yeah. So that was the real... That was the really appealing option was to replace it, even though that it can be sort
00:07:00 of, I suppose, sweated a little bit and maintained. Councillor Jurisevic: So the opportunity for the next round of grant funding, it'll be presented as... I would push that... If it made the criteria last month, we would just continue to make the criteria... Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. So I wouldn't... I definitely wouldn't push it aside and say that it's fine. We'll never come back to it. But I think, obviously, it can be a priority in our next... In our next round. And we're just going to continue to do our routine inspections on it to make sure that nothing goes awry with it. And we'll just continue to do that until we can secure that funding. That's one of the... Councillor Jurisevic: A number of timber ridges that we still have remaining. Speaker 2: Yeah. Are we going to concrete? Most likely, yeah. I think the industry sort of standard is to go to concrete now, so... Councillor Jurisevic: We just want to have it use worth a lot when we go to concrete. Yep. Absolutely. If you can and you can afford it, why wouldn't you? Yep. Well, any other questions? No. Councillor Wilkie: Thank you. No, it's a sensible decision.
00:08:00 Yes. Yes. Yes. Councillor Jurisevic: Yes. Yes. Any discussion? All in favour? Thank you guys for your names. Thank you. Item 2 on the agenda is the Register of Free Qualified Supplies and Business and Marketing Services. Mayor Stewart: Mr Chair I have a conflict. Do you? Yes. Councillor Stewart would you like to declare your conflict? Can I, Councillor Stewart, inform the meeting that I have a declarable conflict of interest in this matter as I'm a personal client of Insight Social Media which is one of 35 service providers that are proposed to be appointed to the panel for digital strategy and marketing. Although I have a declarable conflict of interest I do not believe the reason or person who has a perception of bias because I believe I have had no influence on the operational decision of council officers to engage Insight Social Media therefore I will choose to remain in the meeting room. However, I will respect the decision of the meeting and whether I can remain and participate
00:09:00 in its decision. Thank you. Councillor Jurisevic: I'd like to make a resolution as to whether Councillor Stewart would stay or ask any questions of Councillor Stewart before making the resolution. Councillor Wilkie: How are you a client of Insight Social Media? Mayor Stewart: They used to do all my Dear Molly work, so when I had the website Dear Molly, and they do some social media work for me now. Councillor Wilkie: I'd like to move a recommendation that Council note the declarable conflict of interest by Councillor Stewart and determine that it is in the public interest that Councillor Stewart participates and votes on this matter because Councillor believes that Councillor Stewart has no influence on the operational decision of Council officers to engage Insight Social Media and therefore a reasonable person would trust that the final decision is made in the public interest. I can just second that.
00:10:00 Do you want to speak to it further? I'm convinced that the staff have made these decisions independent of all councillors, including the men, and that there's been no undue influence. I don't even think the staff knew that, as did the rest of us, that the Mayor employed Insight until it was declared here this morning. The staff is not in agreement, so I've got no problem in removing this recommendation. I didn't know that I missed. Mayor Stewart: Thank you. I didn't know that I missed. I didn't know that I missed at 5.30 this morning. Councillor Wilkie: 5.30? Mayor Stewart: Well, I read it. I read it. That's what I read the agenda. That's what I read the agenda. No doubt. Your contract. I wouldn't have let you know earlier. Councillor Jurisevic: Mindy Burton? No. Okay. Any vote on that? G'day to us. Councillor Stewart, can you say hello? Mayor Stewart: Thank you. Councillor Jurisevic: So, any questions or thoughts on the gap between qualified suppliers and visitors?
00:11:00 Councillor Wilkie: Could you just give us an overview of what we're looking at here, please? The advantage of those who may be listening in? Speaker 3: So, economic development, due to the nature of their projects, we identified a need to establish a panel arrangement to basically make our lives easier, more efficient. We need to be nimble. A lot of our projects, and they're highly specialised, especially for the Pre-Gen Digital Hub. So, in consultation with procurement, we determined that this panel would be the preferred approach to engage those suppliers. Councillor Jurisevic: It's a fairly comprehensive list. Speaker 3: Oh, yes, that was funny. Councillor Jurisevic: Do we need that many suppliers on the list? Speaker 3: We, embarking on this project, we didn't know whether we'd get five. As it turned out, we got a lot more than that. So, we won't have a positive response from the market. Councillor Jurisevic: So, as a result of this, is this going to be on Council's capacity? It certainly does. Do you think that they're available to other Councils as well?
00:12:00 Speaker 6: Absolutely, yes. So, part of the process is that these suppliers will open themselves, sorry, not open themselves, will agree to make themselves available under the panel to Queensland Councils. So, hopefully that will be something that will be useful for others as well. Councillor Lorentson: I love the approach. You know, we talk about continuous improvement. I think this is a great example. My question is, does Council intend to streamline other procurement processes, again, in line with our commitment to continuous improvement? Speaker 6: Absolutely. It is definitely something that we look at. On a daily basis throughout our procurement processes. So, whilst we work under the default procurement process, part of that does allow us exceptions under those defaulting thresholds, which allow us to look at our wider Council spend.
00:13:00 This was definitely one of those projects which encompassed a lot of different areas. And we had a number of stakeholders across Council which proved that these services were not just for economic development branch themselves. So, it really has lent itself in that perspective to create. Councillor Jurisevic: And I assume within that market of these, some of these may have specialist provisions within there, so that having a scope of a number of suppliers there, you may target one particularly if there's a... That was a whole point. Exactly, that was a whole point. Speaker 6: Absolutely, yes. Councillor Wilkie: I was really interested in the process and the report that I couldn't read this document. So, for example, could you just tell us what Access Public Relations Unit Trust does and what services that will supply for the Minister Council? Speaker 3: That's... Councillor Wilkie: The first one. If I've read this correctly, it's the first one.
00:14:00 So, that's in business and marketing. Speaker 3: Given the tick for approval to be on the list. I've only got an A4 size, sorry. That's okay, that's fine. So, they are one of the respondents in the business and marketing services component and they were asked to select which portion or what part of marketing they deliver. And, oh my God, this is really testing. Is it? I know it is. It's very, very small. Speaker 6: Is it really? Speaker 3: Access, I would say that their expert was in PR and marketing and PR. The process isn't necessarily to engage every one of them, it's to find which fit, which is the best fit for the services that we need. Yeah. So... Speaker 6: So, when we went out for the tender, under a panel arrangement, the services that we requested are of a very high level general nature so that we can open it up to a number of businesses. What then that allows is to establish the panel and then staff, depending on their project requirements, can then actually drill down specifically to their business scope
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00:15:00 and seek either a direct quote or competitive quotes under the panel and then that's where they can find if they're able to provide specific project-related requirements. Councillor Wilkie: For example, I noticed one of the selected ones, even though many apply, it's just the pink ones that don't look successful yet. Engine Asia Pacific Propriety Limited. Yeah. Speaker 6: Could you give me an idea of what number that is? Yes, number 20. Speaker 3: So, it was a... We actually got some responses outside of SEQ. Yeah. Yeah, across from Perth. This one was maybe even from Singapore. There were a lot of submissions to read. Speaker 6: So, can I just clarify the question? Councillor Wilkie: Yeah, so what services would that provide? And, like, if they're based in Singapore, for example... Oh, right. What services and benefits in Noosa Council would those provide?
00:16:00 Speaker 6: So, if you have a look at attachment three, that will provide you the overall category of service under which they were successful. And in this case, it's digital strategy and marketing. Councillor Wilkie: So, obviously, more an Asia Pacific focus rather than just South East Queensland or... Speaker 6: Not necessarily. Not necessarily? No. Depending on the requirement of the project, at time of quote request, that's when they would determine if that particular supplier would be suitable to engage for services. Councillor Wilkie: Okay. Look, I'm convinced the process was thorough and rigorous and proper. I'm just curious about the large spread and diversity of businesses that you selected for this. Yes. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Speaker 3: We did get a nice portion of local applicants as well.
00:17:00 Councillor Jurisevic: Yeah. Yeah, that was the thing. I looked at the first attachment. I mean, there were a number of companies that didn't have a local base. I'm stunned by the number that do. Speaker 3: The digital economy. Councillor Jurisevic: I was actually surprised to see that many companies listed and only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 11. 11, 12. No, however, Brisbane-based. So, contributing to the local economy. So, they're not all Noosa-based. They may be Sunshine Coast or South East Queensland. That's correct. So, they're actually Queensland-based. Speaker 6: Yeah. Councillor Jurisevic: Absolutely. Okay. And then the second attachment actually refers... Sorry. The attachment three refers to those that were successful for and the components of which they would be... Allocated to. ...Able to be utilised. Yes. The services that they could provide. Councillor Lorentson: Mm-hmm. Given part of our local economic plan and our commitment as a council to support local
00:18:00 businesses, curious as to why only 5% weighting is given to contribution to local economy. I would think in this... Mm-hmm. ...Environment that we may push that up a little bit more. Speaker 6: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was a business decision when we went to tender as well. Yeah. Not... As we said, there wasn't an understanding of how many were actually out in the market that could potentially actually respond to this. So, instead of limiting that, the business decided that whilst it may be low, that it So that can be looked at at an invitation process when engaged under the panel so when the projects then do decide okay we need these types of services that can be a consideration at that invitation to quote process. Speaker 3: In particular some of the business and consulting groups tend to be based in the capital cities not so much the marketing so we were just mindful of not wanting to cut out some of the services that aren't necessarily offered in the Shire.
00:19:00 Councillor Jurisevic: In that regard, following up on that question, how many are Noosa, Royal, Sunshine and Fairspace? Do we have any breakdowns in that regard? Speaker 3: We do. Did you bring that up? Did I bring that up? No I don't know if I've brought that up. Councillor Jurisevic: Well I do see a couple of local business names here. We do have those numbers. We can provide that to you. Speaker 6: Can I provide that to you? Absolutely. We definitely have those. Councillor Jurisevic: And I see a number of businesses here. We've been to five Councils for quite some time over the years. Any further questions, Councillor? I think we're there. Can I get a move with it? I'll move it. Councillor Lorentson, seconded by Councillor Stewart. Any further discussion? Councillor Lorentson: No, all good. Thank you ladies.
00:20:00 Thank you. Councillor Jurisevic: All in favour? Aye. Thank you. Final three. ICT Managed Services Tender Award, T43. Justin. Thank you. Give us a bit of an overview on the situation for ICT Managed Services. Speaker 5: Okay, so these are services that we procure from outside the Council to run mission critical infrastructure. So if these things don't work, customers aren't being served, staff can't work, so they're vital to the operations. There's multiple portions in one tender which is designed to allow a large company with a lot of capability potentially offers a great deal in single source air requirements for one company while providing an opportunity for smaller organisations with specialist capability to provide options for portions.
00:21:00 So it's the staff that we have delivered as a service now. In the network portion, we are increasing the speed of some sites, not dramatically because work from home would have an impact. So for example, this site goes from 100 megabits per second to 200. So it's an increase in speed, but not enormous increase. We're also introducing some security improvements in the network to prevent an attack from going through the network. As a result, in the costing, the network portion, for example, will be about the same over three years. It'll be $3,000 left, roughly. The managed telephony, which is Microsoft Teams, I expect that to reduce our cost by around $60,000 a year. And that's because when we introduced Teams in the last contract, it was a while ago, and there's been a lot of uptake in Teams.
00:22:00 So the costs have come down significantly. In the mobile phones, if we moved all of our Telstra mobiles to the preferred supplier, we reduced our costs by about $32,000 a year. And the managed cloud infrastructure, there wouldn't be a change. The existing incumbent would continue at the same price level. Councillor Jurisevic: The question was raised here with regard to telephone service. And I noted in the report, with regard to mobile phone coverage at Kin Kin, for example, where Optus and Vodafone, for Optus and Vodafone, would Telstra have coverage? We would still get coverage for all across the Shire? Speaker 5: Okay, so there's been a dramatic increase in Optus coverage in the last five years. There's some maps that Optus provide that are commercial in confidence that I haven't included in the report.
00:23:00 But there is a coverage gap around Kin Kin that starts about halfway between Cooroy and Kin Kin, that continues north to the Shire boundary. Now... Councillor Jurisevic: Well, we're here for Flavor. Speaker 5: Yes. Now, in February, the Council's Telstra mobiles made 8,500 calls. 41 of those calls came from Kin Kin, from 14 mobile phones. So it's a tiny percentage of our usage that actually comes from Kin Kin. Mm-hmm. We can identify those people by their call history, including the SES, and keep them on Telstra. Mm-hmm. But move other people who have never made a call at Kin Kin to Optus. Councillor Jurisevic: And where is it advantageous we can take advantage of that situation, and where the need arises to facilitate Telstra services to those? Speaker 5: Yeah, so we would obtain maximum savings by doing that. But I'd be pragmatic in saying, you know, are they working Kin Kin? Are they likely to work in Kin Kin?
00:24:00 Mm-hmm. And they could potentially stay with Telstra. But... Councillor Jurisevic: I think that's good. I think that's a good way to look at it. It's an opportunity or a need. So you've based it and laid it up as to how it is most favourable to the Council for them. Yes. Sorry, Justin. Mayor Stewart: Were you going to say something? No. Oh, OK. I just have a question. Maybe it's for you, Trent. Sure. Justin, you talked about some savings. Yeah. When will we see some of these savings, I guess, work through the budget or the next financial year? When are we looking at that? Speaker 8: By the time we move across some of the contracts, we'll obviously do that piece of work, assessing all the funds. You'll see it flow through during the financial year next year. So it'll be... If there's savings there, it'll be a discussion we've been bringing back at budget review. And it's probably going to be more about then what... If we've got savings in IT, what can we do with it? Is it to re-inject into our broader IT strategy? Or is it... Or are there other emerging priorities that we can probably take up from that? Councillor Jurisevic: Clare's already spent 100K. No. No. Trust it. Trust us. Speaker 5: Yeah. Those are a reduction in cost, but then we have things with growth, so extra staff,
00:25:00 new services. So for example, the Peregian Community House, we've put NBN services in there for the security system and the Lyft phone. And so there'll be a reduction in cost, but I can't predict what growth or what initiatives will be approved in the budget. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah. Speaker 5: So... Yeah. Councillor Wilkie: Can I ask... Joe's question in another way. We've just come through a disaster, a natural disaster, flooding, and there is that coverage gap block that's out in Kin Kin. Moving to the service, is anybody out at Kin Kin going to be disadvantaged in communication sense as a result of that? Speaker 5: It's only Council staff. Council staff using a Council mobile. If they're in an emergency and they're dialing triple zero, it'll use any available network. It's only Council staff. I don't know if it'll do the same for SES mobile phone number, but for triple zero it will.
00:26:00 The... Councillor Jurisevic: We're only talking about operational use. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah. It won't affect people trying to contact the Council. No. Speaker 5: No. No. These are just staff mobile phones like my Council issued mobile phone. Yeah. Speaker 8: Okay. And just to clarify Justin's comment before about assessing which service provider we continue to stay on, obviously part of that assessment is the staff member on the LDCC, on the Local Disaster Coordination Committee. Are they an operational staff member that's out in the field? And where is their catchment or their remit for did work? So we'd obviously make sure that we've got continuity of service without... We don't want to impact our level of service community. Speaker 5: If someone complains about a service like that, I look at the substance. So for example, with Optus, there was someone saying, oh, you can't transfer me, there's no coverage between Kin Kin and... I mean, Peregian and Maroochydore. And I thought, oh, it didn't sound right. So I hopped on a bus at Noosa Junction, took the bus down to Maroochydore, monitored the
00:27:00 signal strength the entire time. And except for the Creek Bridges... Not Beckmans. There. So... Bridges Creek. Bridges Creek. So I find it a substance. So I've had people say, oh, Optus is no good. But that's based on a historical understanding. It's improved since then. Yeah. Optus has invested over $6 billion in the last five years. Mayor Stewart: Wow. Speaker 5: So it's... When we did testing 18 months ago, the Optus network was significantly faster down here on the coast. And surprising places, like the Noosa North Shore Camping Ground, we used 4G there. It's Optus, because we can't get Telstra reception. That's a Telstra booster, because we can't get Telstra reception in this room. So each network has its coverage issues. Councillor Wilkie: So Telstra and Optus, they're more on the par now? Speaker 5: I think rural coverage, Telstra hasn't been. If you're going for a drive down to Sydney via New England Highway, you might experience
00:28:00 Councillor Wilkie: different quality of service. Within Noosa Shire? Speaker 5: Yeah. Within Noosa Shire, I could provide the coverage maps. But with the exception of the hole around Kin Kin, the coverage is good. Councillor Wilkie: Okay. The other question I have was, the way you've broken it down with these four separable portions, is this different to the way you've managed the provision of these services before? What's changed? Has anything changed the way you've approached the tenders of these services? Speaker 5: The... That's a good question. So the previous way the tender included an enterprise messaging portion, which is sending SMS messages, basically. And we do that from the disaster management system and from Technology One for when do customers do requests online, we send them status updates by SMS. Both of those systems now have a preference for one particular company. So we single sourced that from and took it out of the tender.
00:29:00 And there's more security requirements in the tender. We had the specification reviewed by Council's managed service provider for security rights solutions. They made 67 recommendations, which were all fed into the specification. Councillor Jurisevic: So is that something yet to come, an addendum to what we're approving here? Another portion? Speaker 5: No, no. The security requirements are embedded in each portion. So for example, on the mobile phone portion. The website we log in to manage our accounts should support two-factor authentication with a mobile, you know, it's Justin Thomas from Noosa Council logging in. So those security requirements are embedded in the specification. Councillor Lorentson: So on page 31, Justin, so it probably explains there's such a variation in price with the telecommunications and cloud managed services.
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00:30:00 One of the tenderers came in. I'm looking at a huge amount and I've sort of gathered that that's the four components all rolled into one. He tendered for all four or is that just for that one portion? I'm looking at the variance is the lowest price is coming at $349,000 and his is coming at $1.3 million. It just seems like a huge variation. Speaker 5: No, that was just for that portion. Councillor Lorentson: Wow. Okay. So we're clearly going to get the job. Speaker 5: So yeah, we had a consultant from Peak Services, which is an LGAQ owned company, is that right? Yeah. Who assisted us with the evaluation, including the costing. So it was done by two of us and the scoring was comparable. There's no massive difference. We weren't being, you know, each other over the head over a bit. It was very similar.
00:31:00 But yeah, a surprising difference. I think some companies maybe tried on or they're dealing with much larger organisations. Councillor Lorentson: Okay. And was there a cost? Was there a cost for engaging with Peak Consultancy? And that's not in the report. Can we have that information, Justin? Speaker 5: Yeah. I don't know it off the top of my head. I'm sorry. That's all right. Yeah. Councillor Lorentson: I can take that on notice, councillors. That would be great. Speaker 8: So we have a program at the moment securing additional procurement resources to support this specialist tender. It was an ideal opportunity for us to try outsourcing to a specialist and see how that went. Fantastic. Speaker 5: So the value that person gave us was they did the probity, make sure we're doing it honestly. They reviewed the specification to make sure it wasn't Justin's idea of a good idea, that it was relevant, modern. It was generic enough to allow a range of companies, not just to do it.
00:32:00 That one over there, Justin Likes, and also helped us greatly with the evaluation, checking. So it wasn't all based on my personal experience or anything like that. Fantastic. So it was very valuable. Councillor Lorentson: Yeah. Great. Thank you. Speaker 5: Any other questions? Councillor Jurisevic: I second. Okay. Moved by Councillor Stewart. Seconded by Councillor Wilkie. No further discussion? All in favour? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Councillor Jurisevic: Thanks, Justin. Item four, Noosa Shire Council Specialised Supplier List. Please. I think we've made an overview on this item. Speaker 6: Certainly. So, as I discussed before, obviously we work under the default procurement in terms of the regulations.
00:33:00 So, as I said before, we work under the default procurement in terms of the regulations. And that requires that we contract medium to large contracts in a very particular way. However, the regulation also allows us exceptions to those requirements under very certain circumstances, such as in this case, a specialised supplier. So, what we normally would do is we review the specialised supplier list. And we would come to yourselves for approval. In this case, our people and culture branch identified an immediate need to actually seek to have two suppliers added to the specialised list as now, and those two being SEEK and LinkedIn. Mayor Stewart: Can I ask, what was the immediate need? Is it an immediate need? Speaker 6: There was an immediate need due to the fact of the size of potential contracts that would
00:34:00 be put into place. It would be at a minimum, a medium contract value, which, under the default procurement process, requires competitive processes. Mayor Stewart: Is the widening, I guess, because it is harder at the moment to get staff, is the widening of our resources to staff, is that part of the reason? Darryl Marne: Absolutely. Sorry, I'm Darryl Marne. Hi, Darryl. I'm the people and culture manager. So, this is my... Thank you. Thank you. Look, the reality is we use SEEK all the time. So, SEEK is a job board. Job boards effectively replace what a lot of us used to do, the inside page of the newspaper. And SEEK is the largest one in Australia, so it's probably been one of the most successful. And we have used it for a while now, but it's only just being put onto the list. So, this is not something that we haven't done before. We use SEEK as being our go-to. But we're not getting the cut-through that we should get, especially in professional
00:35:00 white collar type roles. Sorry, I can't cross you. No, no, not at all. LinkedIn, and I know some of you are on LinkedIn. In fact, I think I've joined you on LinkedIn, connected with you. LinkedIn offers a different platform. So, it's global. It's essentially, people go to LinkedIn because they want their resume on the system. They want to be professionally on LinkedIn. They want to be affiliated with other people like them. It offers a real opportunity for us because our comms department put up really great stories on Noosa Shire Council. So, during the floods, we had stories running on our daily every couple of days, and they were great stories. They're stories about what our people are doing out, you know, helping the environment, helping other ratepayers, and they've got wonderful pictures, and mobile phones do pictures beautifully. And so, it delivers our message straight into LinkedIn world.
00:36:00 And so, what we want to do is, we want to get into LinkedIn on the back of those stories, and basically get into a passive, so these are passive job seekers generally, not active job seekers. Seek is active. I'm actively looking for a job. I'm going to seek. LinkedIn's about the passive person who might not be looking, and then says, oh wow, that's really cool, and why don't I open my resume? Councillor Jurisevic: So, it's a service that we actually pay for with LinkedIn? Darryl Marne: We pay for it. We pay for placing the advertisements. Councillor Jurisevic: Placing the advertisements. So, when we advertise specifically? Darryl Marne: Yes. Yeah. So, it acts like it's a job board. So, it's still a job board, but it's a different job. Councillor Jurisevic: How does that connection with LinkedIn work? Because I know that there is a recruitment capacity in there. Is it just from a marketing perspective to market the jobs, or do we actually get active recruitment services out of LinkedIn as well? Darryl Marne: Yes, you can purchase those services. Councillor Jurisevic: Is that something we're aiming to do? Absolutely. Darryl Marne: Absolutely. We have to.
00:37:00 This is, we just have to, because the market, and I think Anthony Alvamesey failed yesterday on the size of unemployment in Australia, but- What was it? Speaker 1: He had no idea. Darryl Marne: Things are very tough out there at the moment. Councillor Wilkie: Ask me, ask me. Darryl Marne: And so, that's one of the reasons we need to. We need to broaden our story, and we need you to look for different sources, and especially with professional white collar. Mayor Stewart: Yeah. It's a very well patronised platform too. It's very glossy. Yeah, definitely. Councillor Jurisevic: Yeah, it seems like a good platform. Mayor Stewart: Well done for thinking outside the box. It's great. Councillor Jurisevic: And people actually seek to network and all of those, so the word gets around pretty well, so it's fairly- Absolutely. As far as the cost of those services go in comparison, compared to ours, is it cost effective being on LinkedIn compared to ours? Darryl Marne: It all comes down to are you filling your jobs? So, my experience, so I've used LinkedIn, so prior to this role, I was Vice President
00:38:00 of Health and Human Services. I was in HR for Port Australia and New Zealand, and so we used LinkedIn all of the time for professional engineers, and it was new for us. Prior to that, I used it in Shanghai when we were recruiting for Port of China and also for Port Asia Pacific. So I guess my experience has been is where we haven't been using it, and then we've gone to using it, it provides a much better platform. You still got to use job boards, and so it doesn't mean that you stop using SEEK, but you start to have choices about where you place ads. Councillor Jurisevic: Would you get a greater coverage with LinkedIn internationally? Oh, absolutely. Darryl Marne: Absolutely. Like your coverage, SEEK is very widely subscribed to across Australia, but with returning Australians coming back to, in the post-COVID world we're in, where people are looking to come home and that they can, this is a great opportunity for us to go and get out there amongst some
00:39:00 of those people who've got great experiences and are looking, Noosa would be an attractive place to log. Councillor Jurisevic: Well, I know every time we've got job vacancies and they're posted on LinkedIn, I share them on my profile as well, so. Thank you. And possibly get out more, and that network does spread them out. I quite often get likes on the recruitment side, so. Mayor Stewart: It's quite amazing. I had a post recently, it reached 180,000 people. Which is fantastic. It's amazing. So that sort of reach is broad. Yeah. And you've got a whole bunch of really good comments as well, and you. But yeah, I guess the point is, it reaches across. Exactly. It does. Darryl Marne: But then you've got the comments, so the comments, the number of clicks in gives you a really good idea. So you get a very broad base, but then people click in, and the further they click in, and then they'll look for other similar stories. Mayor Stewart: They can then contact you personally. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Darryl Marne: Yeah. So it's. Councillor Jurisevic: Pretty good stats. Pretty good stats that you get when you go to the network. Darryl Marne: You start to get a bit of an idea about where you're resonating and where you're not.
00:40:00 And that's really important. Drilling down those stats. Absolutely. Councillor Lorentson: In regards to inclusive employment opportunities, and what are we as a council doing in that area? Yeah. Councillor Jurisevic: Yeah. I mean, off topic, when we talk about a specialised supply of this. Oh my God. I see. Councillor Lorentson: I see. Far away. I see the overlap. So are we actively seeking inclusive educational training and job opportunities? Darryl Marne: Yes, we are. My sense is we can do better. I'm coming in. I'm new. Yeah. I've been here, I think, eight weeks or nine weeks. I'm marginally ahead of Scott at the moment. Councillor Wilkie: We don't discriminate. Darryl Marne: Yeah. So as a rule, we have a position.
00:41:00 I think we can do better, would be my sense of it. And you've got diversity. You've got equity. You've got inclusion. Councillor Lorentson: Kabi Kabi First Nation representation. Exactly. Darryl Marne: And so I think there's a lot of opportunity there as well. Yeah. But I also know from other organisations that we've worked in is you've got to have a receptive environment as well. There's no good just going out there and saying, look, come all, unless you've got a receptive environment. And so one of the things that we need to work on internally, and so this is, I guess we'll pop out of the strategies that we're pulling together and we'll take those to Scott. So it's just a preemptive discussion. But some of those are about preparing the ground as well. So running unconscious bias training, for instance, amongst not just our leadership group. So all the way through our teams, we're also doing mental health and wellbeing. So we've got special training in that space, which is to help employees. I'm completely off topic now, but stop me when you get sick of it.
00:42:00 But this is good stuff. The mental health first aid training that we ran last week. That was incredibly well received because it gives people tools to help colleagues who show up to work and maybe they're not quite themselves. And it gives them the confidence to then have discussions all the way up and up to and including that. So the difficult part of the training is people who are pre-suicidal or having dark thoughts. And so the feedback we've got was really wonderful. The recommendation is to then take that to the leadership. And involve the leadership in it. It's a significant contribution. It's two days out of your schedule, but it's a really necessary two days. And I guess I could have the confidence that where we've run it in organisations before, like Forward Australia, our organisation became better because of it. Much more receptive, much more able to deal with difference. So you watch this space, more work to do. Councillor Lorentson: Fantastic.
00:43:00 Councillor Jurisevic: I'll move it. I'll move it. I'll move it. The change tacked by Councilor Wilkie. I'll second it because I haven't seconded this meeting. Make sure my name's on the agenda. Speaker 6: Thank you, councillors. Darryl Marne: Nice to meet you. I come back in pretty – began to see some awkward stuff. Mayor Stewart: If there's anything – if there's anything I can do . Darryl Marne: Anything I can do, just please don't hesitate to reach out. Councillor Jurisevic: ... whether the succ Vergara is a council that council or council has back sealed off because Speaker 1: This report is seeking approval for extension to one of our existing contracts for management of Noosa River Holiday Park.
00:44:00 The contract is scheduled to finish on the 30th of April and we're seeking to extend it through to October, mainly for the reason that we've been doing a really comprehensive review of our operating models and contracting approach for the three holiday parks and I've got sort of 18 months of lessons learned of how we can do things more efficiently and in a more streamlined and probably more meeting the industry in its current form. So we just need a bit of extra time to feed those through the contracting model, get the documents drawn up. The reason for pushing it through to October is that we can't just extend it to any time. We've got to work around peak school holiday periods and when's a good time to, you know, potentially if there was a new contract and then we just need to manage that. So this puts the new contract starting. So this puts the new contract starting two weeks after the September school holiday. Councillor Jurisevic: So it's essentially just under six weeks?
45 minutes in ¶
00:45:00 Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yes. Councillor Jurisevic: Okay. Is this the first extension? Speaker 1: No, we had an option period that was taken on by the contractors and then due to COVID we sought another interim extension. So this is a further one. Okay. Councillor Jurisevic: So this has been the last under the contractor ratio or can we, was it an extension year on year out? Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: And we had an option that was under the contract that was taken up and then we had an interim extension. This is an extension to that interim period. Councillor Jurisevic: So how many, I guess the question was asked on how many extensions are allowed under the contract arrangement? Normally it's a three year plus, one year plus one year plus one year option or? Speaker 1: I think because we've gone past the option period so we're stepping into the space where the CEO under the Local Government Act is able to extend an existing contract. Yeah. Councillor Wilkie: Any other questions, Council? Robin, can you just flesh out a bit more about what you mean by review industry management models? Speaker 1: Sure. So I think probably in the last, let's call it decade, there's been a transition within
00:46:00 the camping and caravanning industry of shifting away from probably sort of, we call them mum and dad operations. So smaller businesses. Keep in mind the industry has moved too. So the participation of small businesses has changed. The participation and the value of that industry has grown significantly in 10 years. So the intensity of everything builds. So the contracting space and the operators within the industry have all been evolving as well. So you don't often see just a mum and dad now, they just don't have the resources to sustain an operation. So they're- Councillor Jurisevic: You mean you've got entities like Ingenia and- Speaker 1: Yeah. So they're employing people. Then you've got all the corporates now. So I was at the Queensland caravanning conference on the Gold Coast two weeks ago and I talked with all the corporates about sort of what they're doing and what their industry models are. So they're all playing very heavily in this space now as well. I think Noosa Council since de-amalgamation has been on a journey of moving from fixed
00:47:00 fee, quite small contracts where council still did a lot of activities on the ground to then shifting those into the contract. And instead of a fixed fee, have like a revenue share basis. So what we're moving towards now is the next iteration of that approach. So I've identified quite a few activities that we're still doing as a council that could be more efficiently done by managers on the ground. It just needs to set up in the contract correctly. And there's also a little bit of future proofing because things are changing. The equipment types are changing. The type of travellers are changing. COVID's really changed the nature and the experience that people are after. Yeah. Councillor Wilkie: And the contracts, are they an incentivised model? So it gives the operator the flexibility, they work harder, they market more efficiently, they reap the benefits of that?
00:48:00 Speaker 1: Correct. So the first change that Noosa Council did, it was before my time and I did some consulting work on it, is moving from a fixed fee and it went straight to just a revenue share approach. The next iteration of contract we went out for, for a different park, I introduced a fixed fee plus a revenue share because it provides a business with some level of certainty. So it's constantly sort of recognising how we can play fairly and equitably and still maintain an incentive space, but still give a business some surety and comfort. But yeah, we found that the sharing of revenue works really well. It incentivises everyone. It also gives an operator the ability to look at investing as well and getting a return on their investment and having, bringing a bit more commercial acumen to the way that they operate. Councillor Wilkie: So you're saying investing, putting their own capital into...
00:49:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, not capital into infrastructure, but they might set up programs or they might set up, you know, a bike hire or things like that. Which add to the overall experience, which is great for everyone. Yeah. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah. Yeah. And the returns seem to indicate that that's been happening. Like the occupancy rates seem to be increasing and so do the returns from the holiday parks as a result. Speaker 1: Correct. They're all performing very strongly. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah. Councillor Jurisevic: That's probably the fact that people are locked down through COVID and will talk to their caravans and camping as the alternative. So I'll be interested to see once things start to return to international travel. Speaker 1: Well, we've just had the strongest April month at Boring Point Campground. Yeah. And people can go anywhere at the moment. That's great. So I think what we focused on during the lockdown period was making sure that people had a really good time because you've got a captive market. So if they come and they enjoy their experience... They come back again. Then they'll come back again. Councillor Jurisevic: Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see how the figures go now that international travel is starting
00:50:00 to reopen up and... Speaker 1: Still incredibly strong all the way through to end of financial year. Yeah. Good. Councillor Lorentson: Yeah. Something that I've raised before. Robyn, will council engage or undertake any sort of study, like a strategic study, in the feasibility of expanding holiday parks? Do we have any data on how many people own caravans? And that, to me, is a huge growth market and it'd be great to have informed decision making. Is that a piece of work that your department is considering? Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I might defer to Trent, but I'll just say quickly first, I know it's something that I've definitely fed up the chain, so to speak. Yeah. That there's opportunity there and preparing a paper that looks at all those sorts of things and looks at the data, looks at... Yeah. ...you know, the population of Australia and where those chunks will be in 10 years
00:51:00 and they're all shifting to post-50. So... Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely something that we're looking at. Yeah. Speaker 8: And it's... The journey over the last two years has been about our optimisation of our existing operations. Yeah. And as you can see from the discussions we've had with previous agendas and our annual update from Holiday Parks from Robyn, we're getting to that point. We're getting an occupancy rate very high. We're getting very successful facilities. Now it's time for stage two over the next few years, which is about what is the future growth? What types of accommodation or sites are we going to put on our facilities? Is there opportunity for some of our one-tap sites like John Planning, for example? Are we going to go into that space in the future? Are we going to expand beyond the boundaries of some of our other sites? It's that type of work that we'll be bringing to the table over the next two years as well. Councillor Jurisevic: Great to mention John's landing there. The other question for you, with regard to the introduction of powerheads, is that more
00:52:00 work for the managers to undertake? Speaker 1: No. So the powerheads are set up, the communication, so the powerhead being able to read the amount of electricity used. It uses a radio channel frequency. It feeds that back to an antenna, which drops into a software program. That software and program then APIs through our booking system and it's automated. Councillor Jurisevic: So as they close off the account, the electricity's read? Yep. Speaker 1: It's an automatic API calculation that occurs. Councillor Jurisevic: Thank you. Anything further, Councillor? I'll move it. I'll see. I'll move over. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Stay strange.