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Characteristics of a Good Performing Council

Thursday, 28 October 2010

At the recent Sustainable Councils Conference in Sydney, delegates found out first hand
from Planet Footprint’s Managing Director Andrew Wales which councils in each state are
the best performers and what they are doing that makes them the best.

Planet Footprint currently works with 203 Councils nationwide. Here’s a snapshot of the
characteristics that contribute towards the success of the best performing Councils. :

  1. Decentralisation of responsibility for energy and water performance: in every council, there are multiple departments that are actively engaged in energy and water performance improvement. This is evident when Planet Footprint staff actively engages with several people in Council, rather than just a single sustainability or asset manager and these departments take ownership of both electricity and water usage.
  2. Shared accountability: ownership for each utility account is identified within council, which helps to create a culture of accountability for improved energy and water consumption and expenditure. Reductions in usage and expenditure is celebrated across departments.
  3. Targets are set for both the organisation as a whole and for key properties: Targets are set that are achievable and relatively short in timeframe (e.g. “Reduce energy consumption at the Administration Building by 2% from last year’s level, by the end of the current financial year”).
  4. Transparency and communication: Councils that are at the top of their game are communicating performance regularly to both internal personnel and the community.
  5. Closure of the project loop: Rather than simply completing the project and moving on to the next issue, Councils that are among the best use Planet Footprint to assess the environmental and financial outcomes of projects and feed these back into decision making processes. .
  6. Networking: Councils network with their peers and use Planet Footprint to identify what other Councils are doing to make improvements.
  7. A focus on outcomes:  Those Councils that are the bestis look beyond the data and focus on applying that data to identify opportunities which achieve outcomes. They recognise that you don’t build capacity and improve performance by working with performance data……you build capacity and improve performance by acting on performance data.