Porirua City Council Wins Bronze In NZ's Excellence Awards

MEDIA RELEASE

Friday 7th December 2012

Porirua City Council Wins Bronze In New Zealand’s Toughest And Most Prestigious Performance Excellence Awards

The New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation presented a Bronze award to Porirua City Council at the gala dinner in conjunction with the World Business Capability Congress at Eden Park on Thursday 6th December.

The awards, which are administered by the Foundation, are the only awards in New Zealand which are fully aligned to the internationally respected US Baldrige criteria. Foundation CEO, Mike Watson, says “Being awarded Bronze puts the winner in elite company. These awards are unique in that they are based on an international criteria, scoring system, and a rigorous four-stage assessment process”.

In receiving this award, Porirua City Council has become one of only three Territorial Local Authorities in New Zealand to be recognised in the past ten years. The judges commented that this organisation had a very strong community focus and high levels of community engagement particularly reflected in their “Village” programme which has won national and International awards.

Porirua City Council Chief Executive Gary Simpson said “We have been members of the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation for about 5 years and have been progressively applying the principles and methodology of the Baldrige Criteria across the organisation. Without losing anything that is uniquely Porirua we have made improvements in most areas of our work as a result. The awards process and the feedback we received have given us a reason to look again at what we do and react to the comments that the evaluators have given us. The exercise has been very worthwhile and will have benefits for the Council well into the future.”

Presented alongside the Business Excellence Award was the New Zealand Business Achievement Award. This is an abridged version of the Business Excellence Awards evaluated on the same rigorous basis. Recognised in this category was Waikato Institute of Technology. WINTEC is a role model in the NZ Education Sector being the first in this sector to benchmark themselves against international best practice. The judges commented that WINTEC was strong in Planning and Marketing and particularly responsive to its community and employer groups. The Judges also paid tribute to their focus on developing services aligned to meet identified customer needs and the strong International focus of the organisation.

Wintec Chief Executive Mark Flowers said “We pride ourselves on being a leading institute of technology, with a commitment to continuous improvement. We’d been on a quality excellence journey for many years and we felt the time was right to have our quality processes checked against international standards of world-class performance.

“The application and evaluation process to achieve this NZ Business Achievement Award was hard work, but an extremely rewarding experience for all Wintec staff involved. On receiving the award it confirmed to us we are on the right track, and most importantly informed us of where we can make further improvements.”

“A focus on organisational improvement is essential for us to achieve our goals of educating and up skilling our students for the world of the future; meeting the workforce needs of employers to build our economy and society; and to be competitive on the global stage as a key player in the export education market.”

“We are extremely proud to receive the NZ Business Achievement Award.”

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ENDS

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