By JONATHON HOWARD
THE managing director of Mach Technology, based at Noosa Civic, has spoken for the first time about losing the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) contract with Noosa Council and the companies’ hopes for the future.
Mach Technology’s managing director Paul Pettigrew said the company had worked for many years under contract with the previous Noosa Council, prior to de-amalgamation.
“We started Mach Technology in Sydney, but I specifically moved the business up to Noosa in order to provide the best possible local support to the then Noosa Council,” he said.
But when tenders for Noosa Council’s ICT systems were put out for expressions of interest during the de-amalgamation process in 2013, the Noosa Council’s interim CEO Peter Franks selected TechnologyOne based in Sydney.
TechnologyOne has since integrated Noosa Council’s ICT and financial systems as well as being the first council in Australia to run the new Ci Anywhere 4.03 version of enterprise content management (ECM) that reduces manual data entry and is delivered through a web browser interface.
The contract loss was a devastating blow to Mach Technology and Mr Pettigrew said he still does not understand the interim CEO’s decision.
“We had worked extremely hard to develop the best possible ICT solution for Noosa Council, at a fraction of the price,” he said.
“I cannot speculate what was in the mind of the interim CEO and therefore drove his decision – all I know is he said to me that the all-from-one supplier Tech1 having already selected them for the financial system Finance1 was efficient to him.
“My reservations that they were not expert in the scope tendered (ICT infrastructure managed services), were countered by enthusiasm to be their first customer in this area – and associated promises made.”
Mr Pettigrew stressed that the decision was not made by the current councillors or CEO Brett De Chastel, who formed the council following Mr Franks decision.
“I realise this decision was out of the hands of the current council,” he said.
“However, I hope that when the contract is up for tender in about 18 months, the council will consider Mach Technology as a future long-term and local business option.”
Noosa Today contacted Noosa Council CEO Brett De Chastel to ask when the current contract with OneTechnology would expire.
“When the term of the current contract is up for review there will be a chance for all potential applicants to submit a bid for the ICT tender and this will be considered by council,” Mr De Chastel said.
Mr Pettigrew said he was already receiving some early support from within the council ranks.
“I cannot name anyone at this stage, but there’s been some early support from within council and Mach Technology would certainly hope to be in with a chance to secure the ICT contract in the future,” he said.
