Watercare Services Limited

Document name

Watercare Annual Report 2014

Judges’ comment

Your report has a nice clear title that describes the purpose. We thought the main message was how good Watercare is despite its challenges—some inherited, some part of the business. The report conveys this well.

Most of the report is written simply and clearly. In contrast, we found the Chairman’s report a bit stiff and formal.

We liked how you used graphics throughout the report to make it attractive and encourage readers to read more of it. Minor errors detracted from the quality — better proofreading would have fixed these.

Media statement

We are pleased to be named as a finalist in this year’s WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards. As Auckland’s water and wastewater services provider, our vision is to be trusted by our communities for exceptional performance every day. We believe simple, plain-English communication about our yearly performance helps to build community trust in us.

As a business, we are undergoing a transformation from an infrastructure company to a customer-focused service provider. This requires us to communicate clear, relevant, and accurate information to our customers in an accessible format.

For the 2014 annual report, we summarised the benefits of our projects to the community and included a graphic snapshot of our financial performance. We also broke down our company’s governance structure in easy-to-understand graphics and presented our performance more clearly through colour-coding and a comprehensive commentary.

Our efforts to better explain and communicate the scale and complex nature of our services will continue in future reports and other communication materials.

Rebecca Chenery
Business Transformation Manager