Before leaving Melbourne last year, I was keen to revisit how much water utilities spent on consultants during the 2023–24 financial year. Examining this type of expenditure is fascinating to me because it doesn’t just show where the money goes, it also highlights where utilities place their priorities. In an industry as essential as water, transparency builds trust, and community confidence often matters more than financial analysis alone. I first explored this topic in June 2024, focusing on the 2022–23 year, and it has been fascinating to see how these priorities, reflected in spending trends, have shifted since.
While preparing the data for this post, I found that some water utilities had not included consultant expenditure in their annual reports, even though a full year had passed since the reports were released. These utilities did, nevertheless, acknowledge their obligation to disclose the information under Victoria’s Department of Treasury and Finance Financial Directions (FDR22), which applies to all Victorian public sector agencies. The approach to disclosure varied. Some included the information directly in their annual reports, others published it separately when requested, and a few did not make it available to me at all despite repeated requests (including Goulburn-Murray Water and South Gippsland Water).
In preparing this information, I focused on two key points: presenting the data in the same format as in previous years to ensure it could be compared with the prior financial year.
One thing that becomes quickly clear is that the total expenditure has remained unchanged across Victorian water corporations with the biggest expenditure reported by Barwon Water in both 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years.
Another point of interest in looking at this information for me was understanding how consultant expenditure has changed since last year. Below, I’ve outlined the top 10 consultancies who were reported to be the recipients of this expenditure by water utilities. However, I’d like to preface this with some qualifications. First, utilities that did not disclose their consultant expenditure are not included, which may affect the composition of the top 10 list. Second, there is little consistency in how utilities report this information. Some disclose all consultant engagements, while others only report those outside their usual formal programs, which may skew results in favour of lesser-known firms. Lastly, only consultancy expenditure greater that $10,000 in value has been reported here which again skews the result towards larger consultancies.
| Consultancy | 2023-24 Position | 2022-23 Position |
| GHD Pty Ltd | 1 | 1 |
| SMEC Australia Pty Ltd | 2 | 7 |
| CMP Consulting Group | 3 | 2 |
| Stantec Australia | 4 | 5 |
| Deloitte | 5 | 26 |
| Sequana Partners Pty Ltd | 6 | 6 |
| HKA Global Pty Ltd | 7 | 3 |
| ABK Joint Venture (Abergeldie, BMD, KBR) | 8 | – |
| Wurrunjeri Woi-Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation | 9 | 12 |
| Jacobs Group (Australia) Pty Ltd | 10 | 11 |
Looking at the above information, the following trends seem to emerge:
- GHD maintains a comfortable lead amongst the consultants in the water sector with the total expenditure reported share of $11.43M and $14.55M for 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years respectively.
- SMEC has significantly improved its share of expenditure nearly doubling it from $1.75M to $2.56M within a year.
- Delloitte seems to have significantly improved its position from less than $0.5M share to $1.88M. Delloitte was caught in a scandal in its questionable dealings with the Australian Government around 2021/22 which might explain public authorities including water corporations’ reluctance to engage with them.
QANAT 