Reflecting on 2021

In a year characterised by change, our company has understood the importance of providing as much certainty as possible. This certainty provides a level of comfort for customers, suppliers and most importantly for staff. We have aimed to do this by shattering all norms and benchmarking ourselves, with ourselves! These are the commitments we made:

  • We have committed to our staff by promising to keep them at all costs.
  • We have committed to our customers that we will be completely up to date by Christmas Eve.
  • Our crew have committed to our country’s safety by all becoming vaccinated.

We have provided as much clarity to the crew as early as we could on what we would be asking of them when they got back to work. We have placed our trust and confidence in each other understanding that we are in this together and this is an opportunity for us to defy the odds again.

Finally, we have been honest with all our stakeholders – staff, banks, customers, and suppliers. I want to thank the staff, and our wonderful customers for persevering with us this year. We have grown.

Part of this growth has been personal for our crew. We have implemented our Legacy Programme where we have divided ourselves into groups and discussed James Kerr’s book, Legacy. This book discusses leadership lessons from the most successful sports team in the world. This book has fifteen lessons in leadership which we discuss on a Wednesday morning after our Wellness Wednesday. One of the enduring messages I have taken from this book has been to be a good ancestor. James Kerr’s description of Whakapapa is beautiful:

He suggests we are all standing arm in arm with our ancestors going in one direction and our future generations going in the other. “At this present moment, the sun is shining on us. However, the sun will set on our time, and we need to ensure that we have left this place in a better state than we found it.”

Apart from our own personal growth, we are on track to have grown by 10% from this time last year.

With this growth and Auckland’s unitary plan we have seen the need to have a vehicle that can suck and clean in low car parks. Hence the arrival of Trailer Trash. This 2000l vacuum unit fitted with a water-blaster has a height of 1.85m and is towed easily behind a Ute.

Carbon Neutrality by 2030

We have also set ourselves the ambitious goal of our company being carbon neutral by 2030. To this end we have replaced two of our combustion engines with electric vehicles. Our plan is to convert all our utility vehicles by 2025. From 2025 to 2030 we will embark on converting the trucks to a carbon neutral option.

We are also very proud to support Sustainable Coastlines, and really enjoyed our first coastline clean up as a team alongside Sustainable Coastlines and the local community. (Photo above).

New team members

We have introduced new staff who have made a major difference in our team.

   

 

  • Edwin Tugadi is a new vacuum truck driver for us, and he brings a wealth of experience from Christchurch.
  • Orlando Segarra is our new technician, and he brings experience, strong work ethic and intelligence to our company.
  • Mahdi Hafzi is our new technician who is resilient, consistent and a hard worker.
  • We have also managed to get Mike Beeston back out of hiding and he is now here doing what he does best, driving a large truck!
  • Amy Pervan is our phenomenal accounts assistant who has brought a wealth of experience, and extremely high standards. She is so efficient and has been a massive help to Claire.

We have introduced a new ritual whereby staff who come on board with us are officially presented with their Dutton Stormwater hoodies after they have been with us for two months. They are now part of our story, and it is their responsibility to leave the hoodie in a better place than it was.

Highlights of 2021

One of the highlights for 2021 was the light Dutton Stormwater shone on the Stormwater Conference in Tauranga. We made our presence felt. On the night of the dinner, I took the time to stand back and marvel at our table. We had 10 of the most interesting, brilliant people I know talking about stormwater, and I felt proud. I think it shows in this photo with Gillian Blythe, Water NZ’s CEO.

We have also celebrated a resilient year with our company Christmas party, hosted with home cooked food at our home, organised by Claire and with the food served by a beautiful catering team of Dutton Stormwater children!

We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and rejuvenating holiday!

Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard for us this year. Thank you to my daughters who support me, and most importantly, thank you to Kate for the enduring support and love you give me.

I am blessed.

Ed.

Light at the end of the… tunnels! Removing 117.6T of waste

Dutton Stormwater is not afraid of tackling challenging jobs and from April through to June 2021, we embarked on a massive one, by cleaning the three soakage tunnels running under central Auckland.

The task to clean 265m of underground tunnels was extremely demanding – not only physically, but logistically, and health & safety wise. Each day the crew had to dig, shovel and vacuum sediment, that in some areas was up to 1.5m deep, leaving them little more than crawling space to move.

  1. MELVILLE TUNNEL
    • 62m
    • 270 hours,
    • 18,400kgs waste removed
  1. KING GEORGE TUNNEL
    • 171m
    • 758.5 hours,
    • 84,500kgs waste removed
  1. GILLIES TUNNEL
    • 32m
    • 48 hours,
    • 14,720 kgs  of waste removed

In total the job took more than 1076.5 hours to complete and a whopping 117.62 tonnes of sediment was removed.

Total amount of stormwater waste that we removed and was kept out of the ocean from Jan 2021 to November 2021 was 1455 tonnes – equal to approximately 50 humpback whales.