Sunwater: Transforming records management through collaboration and digital innovation

The background

Sunwater is a Queensland Government-owned corporation responsible for water supply and infrastructure across regional communities and industries. As part of its ongoing information management modernisation, Sunwater aimed to streamline how physical and digital records were managed, improving compliance, accessibility, and cost efficiency.

Before partnering with Grace, Sunwater’s records management operations faced several key challenges:

  • Slow pickup and retrieval response times, affecting customer service.
  • Rising storage costs across multiple regional sites.
  • Fragmented record management — with multimedia and physical records stored separately.
  • Lack of visibility over unlisted and legacy cartons, creating compliance and accessibility risks.

When a significant transfer of cartons arrived from another facility, the team discovered a large number of unknown and unlisted records. These required urgent attention to ensure compliance and business continuity, placing additional pressure on existing resources.

Grace partnered with Sunwater to deliver a coordinated records transformation program, leveraging Grace Gateway, Scan-on-Demand, and ELO Digital Office to modernise both physical and digital information management.

Grace’s support included:

  • Rapid assessment and processing of unknown and legacy records.
  • Implementation of structured sentencing and digitisation workflows.
  • Integration of digitised records into Sunwater’s enterprise records management system (ERMDS).
  • Consolidation of carton data and metadata into a single source of truth via the Grace Portal.

Although early stages of the project faced challenges due to turnover in project management roles, collaboration has since stabilised. The current partnership model between Grace and Sunwater is built on open communication, shared problem-solving, and a clear focus on improving outcomes.

The partnership has delivered measurable and lasting improvements across operational performance and data governance:

  • Turnaround times improved, with scanning now aligned to service level agreements.
  • Enhanced communication and responsiveness, reducing delays in record retrievals.
  • Reduced storage costs through progressive sentencing and defensible disposal.
  • Improved data integrity, with digitised records captured directly into the ERMDS.
  • Greater accessibility and efficiency, as carton information is centralised in the Grace Portal.

These changes have not only reduced operational overhead but have also strengthened Sunwater’s ability to manage information in a compliant, transparent, and agile way.

“Grace’s support enabled a successful physical and digital transformation of our records, streamlining sentencing, digitisation, and access protocols. This transformation has proven to be a worthwhile investment, delivering measurable improvements in cost, compliance, and customer service, while laying the foundation for a more agile and transparent records management environment.”

– Arlene Colwell, Information Coordinator, Sunwater

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