Debate on Regulatory KPIs at International Conference in Brisbane
Date: 29-Jun-2017
The World Water Congress has come and gone with Dave Cameron attending the Industry Leaders Forum and Rob Fearon participating in a debate entitled “the Purpose of Benchmarking” with representatives from EurEau (a European membership body for utilities), Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Netherlands, Australia, the Czech Republic, and with a Spanish moderator.
Rob was challenged to be the speaker in favour of the motion “is benchmarking an effective tool for regulation of efficient services? – or is it instead an obstacle to efficiency with excessive regulatory intervention?”
A live voting process was conducted with attendees able to change their position throughout the debate. Despite losing the lead early, Rob was successfully able to bring the room around to finish level-pegging with the negative speaker. A photo of the debate is available here.
While the event was a bit of fun with speakers in many cases arguing a position contrary to their own beliefs, the end result really reflects that there are two types of benchmarking with equally valid objectives. As qldwater members are in the middle of submitting their annual regulatory data, they should take comfort in the knowledge that an international forum has reinforced that quality benchmarking is crucial, for both utilities to compare against each other to identify potential efficiencies, with a need for regulatory backing for some core indicators to ensure consistency and a customer focus.
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