We’re committed to working with the community and industry to deliver safe and reliable power, and energy products and services that meet your needs.
During the past two years, we’ve experienced sustained high volumes of new residential and land development applications. Applications have more than doubled from around 3,000 per year to more than 7,000 per year.
Like many Australian industries and organisations we’re experiencing resourcing challenges, which together with more applications, are affecting the time it takes us to review and approve developers’ designs.
We're working to reduce these delays as a matter of priority.
Measures we’ve implemented include:
Improving our service to customers
- regular meetings with a project manager and customer relations consultant
- regular project updates through proactive engagement activities
- prioritisation of work program based on a civil practical completion date provided
- Instigated Early Undertaking Contracts (EUC) for materials ordering to mitigate supply chain delays to customer projects. EUCs are negotiated with customers at the time of application to ensure that commercial arrangements are in place to manage peaks in customer applications.
- engaging earlier with developers to help prioritise their work based on their civil construction readiness
- invitations to participate in key customer stakeholder working groups or project related forums organised by Western Power
Managing our resources
- outsourcing work and hiring new employees
- redirecting existing resources to the Distribution Design Team
- working with our team of designers to ensure a sole focus on Land Development parcels of work.
Looking at the big picture
- proactively engaging with customers to ensure that we’re delivering effectively with current resources
- industry updates regarding upcoming process changes, industry impacts, material supply chain constraints and initiatives pipeline
- working with industry on the current challenges and potential improvements
- continually reviewing current processes in collaboration with developers to identify efficiencies
- facilitating a working group with the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) and other industry representatives, to proactively raise and discuss contentious issues
- meeting with the UDIA and industry representatives to understand concerns and committing to improve performance
What you can do to get your application through faster
Depending on the complexity of your project, it’s currently between three to eight months to provide a design and quote, and a further three months to construct (upon payment and confirmation the site is ready). These timeframes are laid out in detail in the FAQs below.
- If you’re looking to connect or make changes to existing connections, contact us as early as possible in the process so we can provide you with as much information as possible about timeframes and requirements for delivering your project.
- Make sure your application submissions is complete and compliant so we have the best opportunity to efficiently process the request.
- Non-standard requests may take longer to review.
- Project status updates: we encourage Electrical Consultants or the authorised applicant to be the point of contact for project updates and technical conversations to ensure efficiency.
- Customers and their clients who want updates on their project status and prioritisation should contact their Electrical Consultant or authorised applicant.
- We can’t provide any project information to unauthorised people. To effectively manage all projects fairly, multiple queries on the same project may be limited to one response.
How do I get an update on my project?
Please use the following contact methods for project related updates:
- General ad hoc project updates: Contact us
- Track an application you have submitted: Self-serve project updates: MyWP Projects
- Application technical enquiries support: Pre-application enquiries
- Strategic business conversation: Western Power Customer Relations representative
- Project PC date: Western Power assigned project manager
- Technical queries post application: Western Power assigned designer.
Please be assured we’re working to mitigate delays as a matter of priority. We understand the challenges and impacts to our customers and are committed to continuing to work with you.