Taree is a successful rural centre sustained by a wide range of activities including dairying, a timber industry, leather goods and engineering works. The region covers an area of 3,752 sq km. It ranges from Johns River to the north, south toward Bunyah and west to Nowendoc.

The Manning Valley is focused around Taree, with the towns of Wingham, Old Bar, Harrington and Hallidays Point major population centres. It has a population of approximately 48,000 residents including around 2,000 Indigenous citizens.

From the centre of Taree on the river there are scores of villages and localities in the Manning Valley - beautiful coastal towns with lagoons, lakes and glorious reaches of the river meeting the sea; the quaint and quiet inland villages that serve the farms rolling over the river flats and surrounding hills; the dramatic scenery of the mountain country; the wildlife to be glimpsed in forests.

It has a promising future in growth and prosperity as families choose to make the 'tree and sea change' from over crowded cities.

Challenges and Opportunities

“Before acquiring the ICON OPERATE Project Management Information System we were managing all council projects manually” said Duncan Clarke, Senior Leader Asset Planning, Greater Taree City Council. “This meant that there was no integration with our key business systems. It was difficult to link projects with our strategic plans and there was no electronic workflow management available to us” he said.

“We were already using other ICON products when they came to demonstrate the OPERATE Product to us. We immediately saw its benefits and because of their excellent reputation in the local government market place we set about implementing OPERATE” said Duncan.

Objectives

Our objectives were to save time and money by:

• Linking projects to our strategic plans
• Providing project managers with real time project information
• Facilitating accurate cash flow management
• Providing project close-out and component reporting
• Facilitating integration with our key business systems and 
• Providing access to project data from anywhere 

ICON Solution and Services

“The implementation so far has not been without its challenges. Our biggest problem has been to be able to release sufficient resources for the implementation of the system. So although we have now implemented the Works Order module we are yet to implement the Operate part of the system” said Duncan. “We have had a few issues with online access from Taree; however the ICON staff was very professional and quick to respond to all our requests.” He said.


Benefits

“We are eagerly looking forward to completing the implementation of the system so we can reap the full benefit and save both time and money for the council” he said.