Source: University of Otago
Bachelor of Commerce student Dakoda Conroy receives this year’s PwC Summer Student Scholarship after working with Waihōpai Rūnaka over the summer.
The fourth-year student plans to major in Accounting and Finance and receives this scholarship after completing a design framework for the redevelopment of the Murihiku Marae.
Waihōpai Rūnaka is based in Southland with the Murihiku Marae situated in Invercargill; the Murihiku Marae connects ancestrally to nga waka Uruao me Takitimu, maunga Takitimu and the Te Moana Ara a Kiwa.
Waihōpai Rūnaka have been working on the redevelopment of the Murihiku Marae and so Dakoda and her team’s project focused on establishing a proof of concept and analytics toolset for measuring and comparing the operational performance of the previous and redeveloped marae.“Our project was a proof of concept in providing Waihōpai Rūnaka with the necessary tools so they can see their vision come to life and find rich insights in data management practice,” Dakoda says.
“Our project is almost complete, and the final presentation has been well received by Waihōpai Rūnaka,” Dakoda says.
A final report was presented to the Waihōpai Rūnaka on 28 February, with plans for further improvements to be made based on feedback.
“In terms of the outcomes of our project, we were able to successfully follow a structured thinking approach to design a performance framework for the redevelopment of the Murihiku Marae,” Dakoda says.
“We were able to identify a set of key performance metrics and then refine this list with the help of our clients.”
Dakoda received support from third-year Accounting and Data Science student, Alex Nguyen, who helped develop a “PowerBI” visualisation of the key performance metrics the team developed.
She believes her team’s key performance framework exceeded Waihōpai Rūnaka’s expectations and they were pleased at how the project turned out.
“We have learnt so much from the experience and I would like to thank PwC for their support with our summer project,” Dakoda says.
“I would also like to thank the ongoing support over the summer from our supervisors Professor David Lont, Associate Professor Katharina Ruckstuhl and James Martin.
“I hope we can showcase this work to the PwC team and provide insights as to how this opportunity could be expanded into the future.”
