Tom Steele started as a cadet engineer at Leeton Shire Council in 2008; since then he has worked in several engineering positions at the Council and was recently appointed GIS and Assets Coordinator.
Mr Steele was nominated as a Local Government Focus ‘High Achiever’ by Leeton Shire General Manager Jackie Kruger, who cited his work as ‘part of a team that is bringing greater rigour to asset management planning and finding solutions to address Council’s infrastructure backlog’ as grounds for nomination.
Located in the centre of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in the Riverina, New South Wales, Leeton Shire has a population of approximately 12,000 people.
The area’s main industry is agriculture, focused around the irrigated crops of rice and cotton, as well as grapes and citrus.
Mr Steele’s role at Council involves coordinating asset management strategy, practices and processes, maintaining asset and GIS data and systems, as well as production of asset renewal and maintenance programs.
A natural aptitude for technology means he is at home in his current role.
“I have always had an interest in IT, which definitely helps in such a technology focused and reliant role,” Mr Steele told Local Government Focus.
“I have always been a good logical problem solver, which is essential to being a proficient engineer. These skills are also transferrable and applicable to many solutions required of asset and GIS management.”
Mr Steele has made an impressive trajectory through Council: “I started with Council as a cadet civil engineer in 2008 and worked my way through to Engineering Assistant, and then Design and Assets Engineer in 2012.
“Throughout this time, I was focused on producing road, footpath, kerb, and drainage designs, as well as asset inspection and maintaining road-related infrastructure asset data.
“Later, this position was restructured under Council’s GIS and Assets Coordinator, where I focused on maintenance of asset data and Council’s GIS.”
He was recently appointed as GIS and Assets Coordinator at Leeton and has also previously worked part time for Narrandera Shire Council as GIS Officer in a relief role.
A key success for him was during the recent ‘Fit for the Future’ process. Throughout the process, Mr Steele said he used “Council’s GIS software to produce different asset renewal models based upon asset consumption and lifecycle costing to show that Council can reduce its infrastructure funding gap and depreciation expense to manageable levels.”
Some key projects currently underway include the implementation of maintenance management software, Reflect, and GIS viewing software, Intramaps, across other Council areas. The aim is to utilise this software in the field and provide accessible information to as many staff as possible.
Mr Steele said he is also currently working on a condition assessment of infrastructure assets for the 15-16 year and developing a capitalisation process for Council.
He told Local Government Focus the aspects of his role he most enjoys are “the varied range of projects that I get to work on and the freedom I am granted by my management team to experiment with new ideas and technologies.”
Project timeframes and technology limitations prove to be the key challenges, he said, but the pay-off of working at Council is worthwhile: “Working within and doing my part for my local area is important to me.”
