SA Power Networks (SAPN)
South East Water is a Victorian government‑owned utility supporting healthy, liveable communities across Melbourne’s south‑east.
Each day, it delivers essential water, sewerage, trade waste, and recycled water services to more than 1.8 million people. As demand grows and expectations continue to evolve, South East Water is delivering an increasing number of infrastructure, business, and technology initiatives to support its customers and communities.
The challenge
Like many organisations in the water sector, South East Water is responding to rising demand, ageing infrastructure, and increasing expectations for resilience and service quality.
This is reflected in a growing pipeline of projects and programs across the organisation. As this pipeline expanded, so did the complexity of prioritising, coordinating, and delivering work across multiple teams and functions.
Strong delivery capability already existed across the business. There was an opportunity to bring greater consistency, visibility, and alignment to how work was planned, governed and delivered at an enterprise level.
To support this, South East Water engaged Escient to help establish a Transformation Management Office (TMO) to bring greater structure and visibility to how work was prioritised and progressed.
The approach
Escient partnered with South East Water to design and establish the TMO, focussing on practical ways to improve coordination, support decision-making, and help teams deliver work with greater clarity.
We worked closely with executives, PMO leads, and delivery teams to understand how work was currently planned and delivered, and where greater alignment would make the biggest difference.
Through a series of co-design workshops, we brought teams together to establish a consistent approach to prioritisation, reporting and delivery. This ensured that new ways of working reflected the needs of different parts of the organisation and could be applied in practice.
Frameworks and tools were developed and refined through real-world use. Project reporting templates and dashboards were piloted, iterated, and improved based on feedback, helping teams build confidence and ensuring they were practical to adopt.
Throughout the engagement, Escient worked as an extension of South East Water‘s TMO Establishment Project Team supporting design decisions, delivery oversight, and change adoption, while keeping the approach aligned to evolving organisational priorities.
The outcome
South East Water now has a clearer, more coordinated way to plan and deliver transformation across the organisation.
Key outcomes include:
- A clear path to establishing the TMO
A defined strategy and roadmap to guide build, transition and ongoing operation - Stronger prioritisation and delivery
Consistent approaches that support better investment decisions and align work to strategy - Greater visibility across the portfolio
Clear reporting and dashboards that give leaders confidence in progress and risk - More connected ways of working
Improved coordination across teams, reducing duplication and supporting consistent delivery
These foundations give South East Water the structure and confidence to manage a growing transformation pipeline and continue delivering for its customers and communities.