Central Highlands Coordinator Emergency Services Glenn Bell with other DMO Network members at the awards ceremony.
Representatives from local government disaster management teams across Queensland, including the Central Highlands Regional Council, travelled to Brisbane this week to accept a 2017 Premier’s Award of Excellence.
The award recognised the establishment of the Disaster Management Officers (DMO) Network, which was set up 18 months ago by the Office of the Inspector- General Emergency Management (IGEM) and the Local Government Association of Queensland.
The purpose of the group is to provide a peer-driven network of frontline disaster management officers to cost and resource-effectively share knowledge, jointly develop innovative ideas, learn from each other’s experience and identify and implement best practice.
As of June 2017, the network comprised of a total of 84 registered members from 55 councils and now collectively boasts more than 726 years of disaster management experience.
Central Highlands Coordinator Emergency Services Glenn Bell is part of the network and attended the awards ceremony at the QUT Gardens Point campus on 21 November 2017.
‘We don’t have the resources to be able to develop everything ourselves in house, so if we are able to share the resources and knowledge from other practitioners in the field and bring them into our own service we are saving the community a fortune, plus it’s best practice we can bring in,’ Glenn said.
The Premier’s Awards for Excellence acknowledge exemplary work by individuals and teams across Queensland and recognises outstanding initiatives being developed and delivered for the benefit of all Queenslanders.