Say what?
The Note’s operatives have spent enough time in the world of business reporting for corporate vernacular to become a seamless part of our language.
At home, the kids have KPIs for their remuneration and we often bemoan the fact other drivers have not adopted world’s best practice or at least some form of quality benchmarking with regard to their skills set.
Nevertheless, rare as it may be, even we are occasionally flummoxed by a bit of detailed programmatic specificity.
Take for instance the brief description by West Perth investment management and asset development specialist Centauri’s strategy for its North West Infrastructure Fund 1.
“NWI Fund1 was established in April, 2009, with a mandate to invest in supply-demand imbalanced, small-scale, high cash flow accommodation-based scenarios in locations supported by both resource and tourism based demand in the North West region of Western Australia,” Centauri said on its website.
Even we reckon it would have been easier to say caravan parks, dongas and motels, if that’s what it meant.
Backtracking
Rio Tinto Pilbara operations president Greg Lilleyman regaled the WA Mining Club with his take on how mining had changed since he graduated from Curtin in 1988 and the benchmark price for iron ore was $15 a tonne.
One tidbit we learned from the mining guru was in remote-operated vehicles, where Rio is a leader.
Mr Lilleyman said the unmanned trucks were so operationally perfect they caused problems.
“We had to program in a little imprecision to stop them wearing tram track ruts into the haul road because they followed exactly the same path every time,” he said.
Remuneration
Last week the news pages of this august journal carried a story on the ever-sensitive subject of salary packages of the state’s leading public servants, including Transport supremo Reece Waldock.
Using figures obtained from the department’s annual report, we said Mr Waldock earned a tad over $500,000. It turns out the annual report is wrong and his total salary package including superannuation and motor vehicle benefits is $446,968.
So, just to clarify; no surprise pay rise last year.