50 years of providing emergency response and supporting safety across Australia…
Origin’s National Response Centre (NRC) has been providing a wide range of specialist Employee Safety, Asset Monitoring and Emergency Response services to businesses across Australia and is celebrating 50 years of operations at its new response centre located at 600 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
NRC was originally established by the Government-owned Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria in 1972 to manage inbound emergency calls and outbound dispatch to the field following the conversion of towns gas to natural gas in Victoria. In 1999 Origin (formerly Boral) acquired the NRC and began offering services not only within Origin but externally to businesses across a variety of industries including energy, oil and gas, water, transport, engineering and, more recently, mining and the renewables sectors.
Today, the NRC handles some 600,000 calls ranging from emergencies, to faults, safety monitoring and smart meter deployment, plus around 150,000 jobs dispatched directly to field resources.
The NRC is also the first point of coordination for unfolding emergency events and has been at the sharp end of the response to several large-scale emergencies including post incident recovery support following the 1998 Longford gas plant explosion – a role the NRC played to support the gas industry and the broader community through such a difficult time.
Over time the NRC has looked for opportunities to broaden its service offering and customer base and around 13 years ago initiated our employee safety monitoring services to ensure the welfare and safety of employees undertaking high risk activities including driving long distances and undertaking lone and remote work. Today, there are some 2,000 users of the service logging these activities using our mobile monitoring app, TraXu, allowing the NRC to actively track check-ins, closures and escalate where necessary.
Shane Rayner, Manager of NRC, said, “We are entrusted with the safety of people performing high risk activities and we understand how important that is. I am extremely proud of the way that the team adapts to changing circumstances – whether it’s a natural disaster, a widespread emergency event or even a pandemic. The team hasn’t missed a beat and we are held in high regard by our customers for our professionalism and the important job that we do around the clock”.
Another key NRC monitoring service is an In Vehicle Management System (IVMS) used to track the safety of drivers and passengers in vehicles across several NRC customer fleets. IVMS critical events such as vehicle roll-overs, impacts, duress and fatigue cameras are overseen in real-time by the NRC, including the immediate response to these critical events.
Reflecting on the role of the NRC over 50 years, Shane said: “It’s been a journey that’s evolved over time – one that’s involved significant change, challenge, reward and to being resourceful to build a brand that our customers can rely upon when needed most. The team have had to adapt as well for the business to be successful – it’s this aspect that I’m most proud of”.
“The NRC has grown over the 50 years and it’s great to see the breadth of support we now provide throughout Australia, playing our part in making sure that the community is safe and that everyone arrives home safely at the end of the day.”
Listed below are our valued customers the team service on a 24/7 basis.
