About Edward River Council
Edward River Council (ERC) is a local government area in the southern New South Wales Riverina region, formed in 2016 from the merger of Deniliquin and Conargo Shires. Covering the major town of Deniliquin and surrounding rural areas over 8,000 sq km, it has around 9,000 residents. Agriculture is a key economic driver, with the region producing rice, wheat, wool and more. The Edward River running through makes it prone to flooding that can severely impact local communities and infrastructure. As a regional council serving urban and rural areas, it manages roads, facilities, community services and economic development.
The problem
It’s common knowledge that local councils in Australia often manage multiple grant-funded projects with various contracts and reporting requirements. Tracking project progress and budget consumption while ensuring compliance with grant requirements for all moving pieces can be a significant challenge.
Add in the complication of delivering a disaster-relief solution, it becomes necessary for councils to think long-term and use their funding not just for the here and now, but to future-proof its infrastructure for the wider community.
Edward River Council faced such a challenge upon receiving $11 million in funding from the Australian and NSW government’s Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA) for flood recovery projects after the devastating floods in southern New South Wales in 2022.
Without a purpose-built solution for grant management that links back to ongoing project delivery, it was extremely difficult for the council to get a comprehensive view of project progress and outcomes, and report back on multiple grants they were awarded for this initiative.
“The response required to recover from the floods was intimidating, however at that time, we had CurryPM on board delivering our roads program to lend support. After undertaking extensive damage assessments we were granted funding for the repairs. In working with the disaster funding, we understood the requirement to maintain accurate records of where the funds were spent. In the process CurryPM helped us adopt SurePact, tracking and creating that many-to-many relationship between our grant funding and all our flood recovery projects. We would’ve struggled to maintain the required traceability using spreadsheets and accounting processes alone.”
Peter Davis, Manager Projects and Capital Works at Edward River Council
The solution
Edward River Council engaged staff from Curry PM, the project management team working on flood recovery for the council, who adopted SurePact. Not only does this mean the council can accurately map its grant funding to flood recovery efforts, this also allows them to manage grant compliance risk in the ongoing years. Because SurePact’s feature set and framework are uniquely fitting for Australian local council requirements, the ERC-CurryPM team were able to efficiently onboard its team and utilise the platform for the council’s flood recovery program by April 2023. Notably, the council made a special request to Transport for NSW, which was considered and approved as a once-off.
Michael Eddie, the CurryPM team leader and project director, highlights that SurePact’s robust project and contract management capabilities are essential for complex scenarios.
“Our model is to work on the ground with council and SurePact gave us the tools we needed to maintain grant compliance and control over the flood recovery work at Edward River Council,” says Michael.
The results
Once the process of implementing SurePact was complete, Edward River Council’s flood recovery and the CurryPM team’s ongoing project lifecycle were set up for long-term success. The centralised platform provided visibility into budget expenditure and ensured funding was utilised responsibly while easing the administrative pressures on the council’s internal teams when it came to reporting back to their funding bodies.
“SurePact has given us the capability to ensure compliance and accountability across Edward River Council’s various projects. As my team works on the ground, the information they track in SurePact daily is visible to the council. This eliminates the need for unnecessary back-and-forth email chains that used to overwhelm everyone when it came time to reconcile their reporting on the funding side,” remarks Juan Carrasco, an engineer at CurryPM who is working on Edward River Council’s flood recovery program.
By adopting SurePact’s grant management solution, Edward River Council has taken a forward-looking approach to drive sustainable infrastructure delivery. Through sound financial governance of its grant funding post-award, they are ensuring that future funders have no questions about the council’s ability to responsibly handle large sums of grant money across multi-year programs.
