OPEX 2026 - Day 2 Program (Tuesday, 27 October)
9:10 am - 9:40 am
KEYNOTE Building a Continuous Improvement Culture at Scale
Ravi Ramachandran -
Principal Operations Excellence Transformation,
Telstra.
Operational Excellence has existed for decades under many banners—Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, Business Process Excellence and Productivity Programs. Yet many organisations still struggle to move beyond training teams on tools and concepts.
At Telstra, we challenged conventional thinking and focused on behaviour change before methodology. By building capability, creating communities of practice, and embedding improvement into everyday work, we have engaged more than 2,000 people in a transformation that is delivering measurable business impact and national recognition.
Hear the story of how we turned Operational Excellence from a program into a movement and built momentum that continues to grow across the organisation.
9:40 am - 10:10 am
SOLUTION PANEL | Building a Continuous improvement culture when your people are exhausted from change
James Gooley -
Director - Service Delivery - ANZ,
Teletrac Navman
Gino de Castro - Head of Business Strategy & Transformation, WaterNSW
Claire Singleton - Head of Organisational Change Management - Global HSESC Transformation, Rio Tinto
Change fatigue is real. Transformation programmes are failing not because the strategy is wrong but because the organisation has hit psychological saturation. How do you re-engage a tired workforce around continuous improvement as a mindset, not a programme?
Claire Singleton
Head of Organisational Change Management - Global HSESC TransformationRio Tinto
10:10 am - 10:40 am
PARTNER CASE STUDY | The delivery infrastructure gap: Why execution fails without the systems, data and operational backbone to support it
Most execution failures aren't leadership failures — they're infrastructure failures. This session examines the operational foundations organisations are missing that cause programmes to degrade at scale: process visibility, real-time performance data, and the connective tissue between strategy and frontline delivery. A commercial perspective on what closing the gap actually requires.
10:40 am - 11:10 am
Morning Break
Fuel up, connect, and explore - your chance to grab a coffee, meet solution partners, and spark new conversations across
11:10 am - 11:30 am
FIRESIDE CHAT | Why transformation programmes know what to do but can't deliver: The execution gap is the strategy
Paul Jamieson -
General Manager - Operational Excellence - Customer Enablement,
Bendigo Bank
Organisations are not failing on vision or investment they're failing on delivery consistency. This session reframes execution capability as the core strategic asset, examining why performance degrades as programmes scale and what structurally separates organisations that deliver from those that perpetually plan.
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
CASE STUDY The delivery infrastructure gap: Why execution fails without the systems, data and operational backbone to support it
Elaine Zhuang -
General Manager, Strategy, Transformation and Value Delivery, Chief Data Office,
NBN
Most execution failures aren't leadership failures — they're infrastructure failures. This session examines the operational foundations organisations are missing that cause programmes to degrade at scale: process visibility, real-time performance data, and the connective tissue between strategy and frontline delivery. A commercial perspective on what closing the gap actually requires.
Elaine Zhuang
General Manager, Strategy, Transformation and Value Delivery, Chief Data OfficeNBN
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
SOLUTION PANEL | Automation ROI in practice: Where process elimination is delivering and where it's stalling
Organisations have been automating for years — so why does manual process debt keep growing? Practitioners examine where automation investment has genuinely reduced cost and risk, where it has created new complexity, and what separates the programmes that stuck from the ones that quietly reverted.
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
CASE STUDY Building a resilient future for long term sustainability: when your entire industry is under threat, how do you not only survive, but thrive?
Tess van der Rijt -
Chief Operating Officer - Hospitals,
UnitingCare Queensland
The private hospital sector is under threat and being forced to transform; the Federal Government is reviewing the sector's financial sustainability, and one of Australia's largest market share owners went into receivership. For those still in the game, how are they not only surviving, but transforming to ensure they thrive long term, and what can other sectors learn from this?
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Networking Lunch and VIP Hosted Lunches
Join us in the expo hall for a relaxed networking lunch with the full Shared Service community - connect with peers, explore the exhibition, and recharge for the afternoon ahead. For invited guests, exclusive VIP lunches will run concurrently - bringing senior leaders and select partners together for high-impact conversations in a more intimate setting.
2:00 pm - 2:30 pm
PANEL | The productivity conversation leaders are avoiding: When effort is high but output isn't moving
Caroline Ferris -
Head of Core Banking Transformation,
Bank of Sydney
2:30 pm - 2:50 pm
FIRESIDE CHAT | Cutting the work, not the worker: How job redesign is recovering productivity without a redundancy programme
Daniel Kloza -
General Manager - People Shared Services,,
Bank of Queensland
When headcount is fixed and demand isn't shrinking, the only lever left is the work itself. A practical account of how one organisation systematically eliminated low-value tasks, collapsed approval layers, and redesigned roles around output — delivering measurable productivity gains without a restructure.
