Operational Review
Five years after Resource Hub’s first operational review of City of Albany’s waste facilities — conducted remotely during COVID — the team visited site for the first time. What they found was a team ready to move forward, and a data problem that, once understood, revealed a clear pathway to improve reporting, consistency and operational efficiency across council’s waste operations.
A Review Five Years in the Making
Resource Hub first worked with City of Albany during the pandemic, when a remote review via camera and on-site staff was the only option available. That engagement covered the council’s waste operations across two facilities: the Hanrahan Road Waste Management Facility and Baker’s Junction Transfer Station.
When council engaged Resource Hub again, a site visit was long overdue. A new operational review would allow the team to properly assess the sites in person — to walk the facilities, talk to staff, and understand the context behind the data in a way that a remote engagement simply couldn’t replicate.
The review wasn’t just a routine health check. Council was experiencing a specific and significant challenge: extracting reliable operational data from their transactional system required a disproportionate amount of manual effort. Staff had developed workarounds to compensate for system limitations and configuration issues, creating inefficiencies that flowed through to reporting, analysis and regulatory obligations.
Back on the Ground and Into the Data
Resource Hub completed an on-site operational review across both the Hanrahan Road facility and Baker’s Junction Transfer Station, assessing processes, compliance and system use across the full scope of operations.
The review identified that significant functionality within the transactional system was not being utilised. Through improved system configuration and the introduction of pre-coded data structures, many of the manual selections and workarounds contributing to inconsistent reporting could potentially be eliminated.
The project delivered:
- An operational review report identifying process gaps, risks and improvement opportunities across both facilities.
- A comprehensive data governance workbook outlining recommendations for a restructure of the council’s waste data model.
- Some small, immediate, gatehouse tweaks and process improvements aimed at reducing reliance on operator discretion and improving data consistency.
- A proposed transactional data framework designed to support more streamlined reporting for operational, financial and regulatory purposes.
The review also covered the council’s tip shop operation, aptly named the Fossicker’s Tip Shop, which runs an innovative voucher program. Residents who drop off reusable or recyclable items at the shop before visiting the transfer station receive a voucher that reduces their disposal costs.
While the program has been highly successful in encouraging reuse and diversion, the review identified opportunities to strengthen the supporting processes and controls. Resource Hub provided recommendations around item acceptance, pricing methodologies, voucher validation and record keeping to improve consistency and reduce reliance on individual staff judgement.
As part of the upcoming implementation phase, Resource Hub is looking forward to working with council to introduce additional rigour into the program, helping ensure vouchers are issued and redeemed consistently, improving auditability, and reducing opportunities for misuse or fraudulent activity while maintaining a positive customer experience.
Importantly, the 2025 review could also be benchmarked directly against the findings from the original COVID-era assessment. With management and operational changes occurring over the intervening years, this comparison provided valuable insight into where improvements had been sustained, where new challenges had emerged, and how the overall maturity of the waste operations had evolved over time.
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Building the Foundation for Better Reporting
Rather than implementing immediate system changes, the review focused on providing council with a clear roadmap for improvement.
The data governance recommendations established a practical framework for moving away from a reporting model heavily reliant on manual effort and toward a more structured, reliable and scalable approach to data management.
Resource Hub also completed an initial data refresh to demonstrate how the proposed model could operate in practice, providing council with a foundation they could begin actioning internally while longer-term implementation planning progressed.
The outcome was not simply a list of recommendations. It was a clearer understanding of why reporting challenges existed, what needed to change, and how those improvements could be delivered in a staged and practical way.
The Next Phase
Following completion of the review, City of Albany and Resource Hub commenced planning for the next phase of works.
This implementation phase is expected to focus on refining and deploying the updated data model, delivering targeted staff training, formalising revised gatehouse and Fossicker’s Tip Shop procedures, and embedding the governance controls required to support consistent, high-quality reporting.
By building on the recommendations and groundwork established during the review, council will be positioned to realise the full benefits of the proposed improvements while ensuring staff are supported through the transition.
There’s a distinct advantage to returning to a site you’ve worked with before. The benchmarking that becomes possible — comparing where things are now against where they were — is something a first-time engagement simply can’t offer.
For City of Albany, the ability to see their operational journey over five years, with management changes and a global pandemic in between, gave the review a depth and usefulness that went well beyond a snapshot audit. And getting there in person, for the first time, made all the difference in understanding the root causes behind the data challenges and identifying a practical pathway forward.