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City Care now has a team of more
than 50 staff in Tauranga, and has
extended its business with Tauranga
City to include electrical and
mechanical maintenance of pumping
stations and treatment plants, and
associated construction projects.
The branch has also recently secured
maintenance contracts in Otorohanga
and the Western Bay of Plenty.
The New Plymouth operation was
also formed after City Care won a
long-term maintenance contract
for the city's water and wastewater
network. After a successful start-up
and transition period, we are now
looking for growth from this operation.
In Auckland, a pumps maintenance
contract for Manukau Water and a
streetscape contract for North Shore
City have added some underlying
stability to our business, though the
bulk of our activity remains in short
term contracts. During the year
we completed some major asset
investigation contracts on the North
Shore sewer network, and a major
new storm-water main for Franklin
District.
While the performance of our
Auckland branch improved greatly
on the prior year, we are still refining
the mix of business required to
achieve acceptable profits in this
highly competitive market. In the
second half of the year we purchased
a small directional drilling operation
to move into this specialist sector,
and we have recently relocated
some Auckland construction staff to
support maintenance operations in
other branches.
Focus on Excellence
In infrastructure contracting anyone
with the money can buy the plant and
material required to operate in the
business. The assets that can really
differentiate companies from their
competitors are the quality of staff
and the effectiveness of business
systems. For this reason City Care is
committed to excellence in the way
we recruit, train and retain motivated
and skilled staff, and we apply rigor
in our approach to the development
of world-class business processes.
Staff
City Care continues with its policy
of offering fully supported trades
training for all operational personnel.
As a reflection of our commitment,
at the end of the year we had 158
employees studying to complete
National Certificates across 26
trades, or studying for diplomas
or degrees. This amounts to one
quarter of our total workforce.
In the last year we have developed
and run a series of training modules
for our succession pool, and have
progressed management training
by providing a number of skills
development courses.
City Care has recently adopted the
Investors in People standard as a
benchmark for our staff development
practices, and we are working
towards accreditation in this standard
in order to promote the company as
an employer of choice to potential
recruits both domestically and abroad.
Awards
City Care employed its second intake
on the pre-apprentice programme,
which was presented in detail in our
last performance report. Twenty-
four young people, most of them
long-term unemployed youth, began
working for City Care in February,
and twenty-two remained with us
mid-year.
The pre-apprentice programme
was recognised by the NZ Institute
of Human Resources in their annual
awards as the best South Island HR
initiative for 2003.
City Care's focus on human
resources was also recognised
by the Institute of Chartered
Accountants, who awarded us the
trophy for the best human resources
reporting at the Institute's Annual
Report Awards.
19-JAN-04: City Care's rural
fire-fighters respond to the
10th fire this calendar year.
DEC-03: Banks Peninsula
contracts extended for
another 2 year period.
