Weatherzone collab a Better Way of working

Sydney Water's North Delivery Team is always looking for innovations to support better ways of working. So when Project Manager, Daniel Sutton, submitted a Better Way that used weather forecasting to improve planning and processes, our Innovation Team we were keen to explore the idea and future implementation.

Together, Daniel, GIS Consultant Lisa Weber, Digital Engineering Business Partner, Lei He, met with Weatherzone, Australia's leading commercial weather information provider to investigate how the service would benefit construction planning.

Following discussions Weatherzone, kindly offered us a free trial of their business service, a great opportunity to test how the meteorological information service would benefit project teams in real time.

Weatherzone is Australia's leading commercial weather information provider

John Dransfield is a Project Manager for the North Delivery Team. While John and his team do all they can to ensure that site activities remain on schedule, they can't control the weather.

"Recently, the strong winds we have been experiencing at our sites have disrupted our crane activities, and the heavy rain has forced us to delay concrete pours," he said.

So, with weather events the leading cause of project delays, and experts warning La Nina will remain until February 2023, the two-week-long trial offer from Weatherzone was timely.

During the fortnight trial, the service offered project teams access to site-specific weather data, including short and long-term forecasts and details on the area's storm, lightning, and rain activity.
 
"Our project teams found the collaboration with Weatherzone helpful from the get-go," John said.

"Their service gave our site engineers and supervisors forewarning of significant weather events and reduced risk by equipping our project teams to plan on-site activities accurately."

Innovation, Technology and Risk (ITR) Lead Ian Hardcastle agreed, saying the trial proved a better way of working.

"While we can't control the weather, Weatherzone for Business gave our teams accurate, up-to-date data so they could take steps to plan accordingly, which minimised risks and allowed for smoother delivery," Ian Hardcastle said.
 
"Access to this data helped us organise and increase our efficiency by ensuring we didn't waste money and time when bad weather forced us to cancel suppliers or delivery partners at the last minute." 

A big thank you to Weatherzone for this great opportunity, we look forward to working with the service in the future.