Degree C - Where the Sky's the Limit

Degree C wins gold for State-first CCTV innovation

Congratulations are in order for Degree C, a 60-plus-year-old company proudly based in Ulverstone and one of the Central Coast's most recognised and highly respected businesses, whose team has taken out the Gold Award for Innovation at the 2026 NECA Tasmania Excellence Awards.

A big, unglamorous problem, solved

Nineteen Tasmanian councils were once running nineteen separate CCTV systems, each on its own technology and its own standards. Degree C, working in partnership with the Local Government Association of Tasmania, spent two years bringing them together on one enterprise-grade platform, without asking any council to hand over control of its own cameras or its own data. That last part is quite a feat of diplomacy as well as engineering.

Gold, in front of the whole state

The judges agreed on 7 August 2026 in Hobart, awarding the project Gold for Innovation. It is recognition that goes well beyond installing new hardware. It rewards the harder work of identifying a genuinely awkward statewide problem and building a solution that actually holds together at scale.

“We’re proud that a business in Ulverstone can develop solutions of this scale and complexity. It demonstrates that regional Tasmania can be a place where innovation happens.” – TIM JORDAN, CEO, DEGREE C

Steady hand at the top

It is a telling response from a CEO: pride in the people behind the project first, the technology second. Under Tim Jordan's leadership, that has been the consistent approach to growth at Degree C: invest in local people, back them to solve hard problems, and let the results speak for themselves. A Gold Award for Innovation, delivered by a team based in Ulverstone, is that philosophy doing exactly what it says on the tin.

The results in numbers

The numbers make the case as well as the trophy does. The platform has delivered a 90 per cent reduction in system downtime and a 60 per cent improvement in operational efficiency across the participating councils, and it is built so that more councils can be added easily, with room for future technology such as AI-driven analytics and smart infrastructure. What started as a fix for a Tasmanian local government problem is now a model with potential uses across local government, transport, utilities and other critical infrastructure, in Tasmania and beyond.

A word of thanks

None of that happens without the people who built it. Congratulations and thanks to the Degree C project team: Lead Project Manager, Estimator and Designer Stuart Mathews; Lead Site Foreman Chris Robertson; and installers Luke Sapwell, Curt Hodgkinson, Zaali Arnold and Guy Debomford in the North, together with Brad McCann and Johno Reid in the South. Between them, they developed expertise in multi-site system architecture, cybersecurity and network optimisation along the way.

Thanks are also due to the Local Government Association of Tasmania and the nineteen participating councils, who backed a genuinely new way of doing things and trusted a Central Coast business to deliver it.

Sixty years – one Coast

Degree C's connection to the Central Coast goes back more than 60 years, to its beginnings as W&S in Devonport. As the business grew, Ulverstone became its home and remains its head office today, the base from which a local business has grown into a statewide one.

Everyone recognises the building on the way into town. Bright and edgy in its design, the Degree C headquarters stands out for its confidence, energy and permanence, the kind of building that says, quite plainly, here we are, and here we stay.

A reputation built on people

Of the 329 people Degree C employs across Tasmania, 156, including 30 apprentices, are based right here on the Coast, with around eight new apprentices taken on each year across its North-West divisions. Many go on to become qualified tradespeople, supervisors, project managers and leaders within the business, and it is not unusual to find people on the North-West team who have stayed for 10, 20 or more than 40 years.

That loyalty, Degree C says, comes down to a simple philosophy: invest in local people, build strong relationships within the community, and think long term. It is a business that sees its own growth as, first and foremost, a story about people, and one that is happy to say you do not have to choose between building a successful business and enjoying a great place to live. On the Central Coast, you can do both.

Not limited by location or by the job

That is really what this award is about. Degree C does not treat location, or the size and complexity of a job, as a limitation. The company works across electrical, mechanical, refrigeration, fabrication and fire protection, on residential jobs and statewide infrastructure alike, and where an off-the-shelf answer does not already exist, the team builds one. Nineteen councils now running on a single platform, designed and delivered from Ulverstone, is exactly that kind of proof.

While Degree C operates statewide from Ulverstone, Launceston and Hobart, its head office and much of its specialist expertise in cybersecurity, network architecture and multi-site systems remain firmly on our Coast, proof that reach and roots are not mutually exclusive.

Congratulations to the whole Degree C team on a well-earned Gold. It is proof that the next big Tasmanian idea does not have to come from anywhere in particular. Sometimes it comes from Ulverstone.