Council performance – $23 million project spend on track

More than forty percent of coming year’s capital works projects are already underway according to Central Highlands Regional Council’s first quarter performance report. 

Chief Executive Officer Scott Mason presented the report to council at its Springsure meeting saying that a strategic project management initiative is already paying dividends.  

‘We’ve made a concerted effort to set up a governance group to closely manage the $80 million capital works program to not only oversee the delivery but to leverage benefits through the aggregation of projects,’ Mr Mason said.  

In his address to council, Mr Mason said the organisation is performing quite strongly and it has made sound progress in the first quarter. 

‘We are carrying 65 vacant positions, so it’s a credit to the staff that we’ve managed to do so well given the resourcing constraints,’ he said. 

‘I’m particularly proud that we were awarded the Central Queensland Large Employer of the Year at the Queensland Training Awards in July; a clear recognition of the effort expended on recruitment and employee-related initiatives. 

‘Employees have been in the spotlight this quarter as 172 underwent a personal health and wellbeing check with Heart of Australia. The result indicating our workforce health is worse than the national average was concerning. However, it does present an opportunity, as a responsible employer, to implement initiatives to help people get healthier and therefore be more productive and happier at work and at play.  

‘There’s also been a number of community workshops since July, tackling difficult topics such as youth suicide and mental health,’ Mr Mason said. 

‘This is the first of four milestones as we progress through the 2019-20 financial year and, while not perfect, overall we are going really well.’ 

 Highlights of the quarter one performance report include: 

 The entire report can be viewed here.