The Lessons Management Award recognises efforts to develop lessons management capability within an organisation and across the sector. The 2022 Lessons Management Award was proudly sponsored by C3 Resilience.
Winner: Moreton Bay Regional Council Lessons Management Plan
Moreton Bay Regional Council
Moreton Bay Regional Council (MBRC) is Australia's fifth fastest-growing urban region, located between Brisbane City and the Sunshine Coast. With a population size of 479,639 (2020), MBRC is the third largest local government by population in the country, home to more people than the Australian Capital Territory or Northern Territory.
The unprecedented magnitude of the February 2022 severe weather event resulted in significant impacts to the region and tested all agencies and the community to the limit of their capacities. MBRC Disaster Management, as the lead secretariat agency for the Moreton Bay Local Disaster Management Group were able to rapidly develop an innovative hybrid model of lessons management that best supported rapid performance improvement outcomes.
This was done through a deliberate application of proven lesson management as detailed in the Queensland Disaster Management Lessons Management Framework (2020) combined with a novel division of labour that allowed MBRC resources to focus on data assembly through a deliberate debrief process concurrent to the engagement of external contractor resources to deliver additional capacity to analyse, collate and process the 1000+ recommendations into a succinct and clear list of prioritised process improvements.
These processes were then formulated into a 12-point improvement plan that continues now to focus actions to improve and support Disaster Management process in MBRC across all phases of disaster. From this event, many locations within the region recorded the equivalent or greater of annual rainfall totals in just seven days. Post-event analysis conducted by MBRC staff indicated many of the region's flood gauges recorded the highest or second-highest water levels on record.
Many of our river gauges recorded peak flood levels greater than the 200yr event, but in some locations, these levels exceeded 1000yr levels. The rainfall totals received in February 2022 were the largest seen within the MBR this past decade. In comparison to recent events, in May 2015 the highest total rain received within a 24-hour period of time within the Moreton Bay Local Government Area (LGA) was 368mm; in January 2013 it was 449mm; in January 2011 it was 439mm.
In February this year, it was 764mm. By comparison average monthly rainfall in February is typically around 200mm. MBRC is researching historical rainfall totals for the region, and early findings suggest these rainfall totals might be amongst the highest seen by the MBR since the 1870s. In short - the February 2022 rainfall event was a huge event by any current or historical measure.
In line with the Queensland Disaster Management Lessons Management Framework and the IGEM Lessons Management Framework, Council undertook an extensive debriefing process with key stakeholders across the region post the February 2022 flooding event. The debriefing process included face-to-face and virtual group debriefings via MS Team, and the use of the MS Forms survey tool to capture individual and group observations.
Stakeholders who participated in this process include members, advisors and observers of the LDMG and DDMG, MBRC staff, the Moreton Bay CDMT, Disaster Relief Australia, Volunteering Queensland community volunteers, and subject matter consultants. Immediately post the Response phase council conducted 20 group debriefings (both virtually via the Microsoft Teams platform and in person), received 2 external written group submissions, and 429 individual submissions, whilst also utilising the Microsoft Forms on-line survey tool to capture observations. This resulted in 1,435 lines of feedback/observations from the Response phase alone.
Due to the scale of the event and debriefing responses received, Council engaged C3 Resilience to cleanse and review the Response phase data to then extract formal observations, and develop insights and lessons identified. Subsequently, Michael Peter Shapland Consultancy was engaged to conduct the Recovery debriefing process where the most significant insights to this recovery came from interviews and online feedback from.
