MANAGING ASSETS THROUGH CAPABILITY AND KNOWLEDGE (MACK)

Transcription

1 MANAGING ASSETS THROUGH CAPABILITY AND KNOWLEDGE (MACK) Ben Clark, Assets Business Administrator, City of Tea Tree Gully Abstract Managing Assets through Capability and Knowledge is a continuous improvement project that has been implemented at the City of Tea Tree Gully since The project looks at Asset Management through a holistic lens and how to best undertake the implementation of a new Asset Management Information System while dealing with significant change management throughout the organisation. MACK began with an Asset Management health check and evolved into a way of life for the organisation. MACK has been through business process mapping, business case development, tendering and currently implementation. MACK has seen significant growth in terms of Asset Management maturity throughout the organisation and significant cross-organisation buy in. This has been due to the change management and communication being provided to all staff and constant reinforcement of the MACK objectives and measuring the results against the objectives. MACK is empowering all staff through business processes, hardware and software to create a mobile workforce who is invested in and promote Asset Management. This allows us to undertake a practical approach to best practices and striving to meet the standards set by NAMS and ISO Key Words: Asset Management, development, maturity, software, staff, journey, lessons learnt, cloud, Assetic, change management Introduction The City of Tea Tree Gully (CTTG) must continually review how it manages its assets and to ensure it meets the community s changing needs. This has required changes in our systems, staff and structure. The 2014 launch of the ISO55000 Asset Management Standards provided clear direction and a level for CTTG to strive for This paper outlines how CTTG has gone about implementing best practice in asset management and undertaking significant organisational change. Asset Management at CTTG CTTG has an asset base of approximately $1bn with over 58,000 assets and while Asset Management within CTTG wasn t broken, the organisation thought that we had significant room to grow. The organisation wanted to move from making decisions based upon age of assets and depreciation values to a condition based forward thinking organisation. The impacts of conducting business as usual long term could be significant from a financial perspective as using condition the organisation can ensure they are applying the correct treatment at the optimum time to ensure the organisations long term financial sustainability. Structural Changes Structural changes including the development of a number of groups have been an integral part of increasing the awareness of Asset Management within the organisation and enabling the implementation of new systems and processes to increase the asset maturity of CTTG. Strategic Assets is Born 2012 saw the creation of the Strategic Assets team to centralise the strategic direction of asset management within the organisation. A key function of this centralised role was and continues to be to review and implement

2 systems and strategies to help increase Asset Management maturity throughout the organisation. MACK is Born A steering group initially named Asset Management Initiative Steering Group was established to help provide the initial direction for the organisation; in 2013 this group was renamed Managing Assets through Capability and Knowledge (MACK) Steering Group and from this group the MACK program was created. The program started based on a review of CTTG s current Asset Management systems and continued to grow into more than just an implementation project but into a cultural acceptance program for Asset Management within CTTG. Spatial Services The creation of the Strategic Assets team allowed for the ownership of CTTG spatial data to align with asset data under a single business owner rather than being spread across multiple teams within the organisation. Given the importance of the spatial data for the mobility solutions this alignment has proven to be a significant milestone and helped position the organisation moving forward. Technical Assets Group (TAG) TAG is a group within CTTG that has representatives from the Asset teams within the organisation. Regular meetings are held in which all asset practitioners can discuss current issues and projects and with a focus on MACK at these meetings the reinforcement of Strategic Assets vision and the Asset Management journey can be discussed and kept at the forefront. Audit Committee & Council The MACK program made the decision to regularly present and communicate with Council s Audit Committee. The regular communication helped MACK gain significant support from the full council as the Elected Member representatives became the spokesperson for the MACK program in the chamber. This has meant that MACK has become a way of thinking for the Elected Members (EM s) and has helped paved the way for funding submissions being supported as they are able to see the significant benefits of the MACK program from both a community and financial perspective. Maturity Assessment & Future State The first role of Strategic Assets was to undertake an Asset Maturity assessment using the NAMS maturity tools. The Asset Management assessment was aimed at benchmarking CTTG s current Asset Management practices, this became the driver for the review to the current Asset Management Information System (AMIS) and subsequently used when determining where the efforts of Strategic Assets and the organisation will be best focussed and to support budget submissions for asset maturity funding. The maturity assessment found that CTTG was lacking in 3 key areas; Asset Management Strategy, Data & Systems, and Skills & Processes. It was these 3 key areas that led to the first major MACK project, the implementation of a new Asset Management Information System (AMIS). This process was split into 4 main Phases; 1) Phase 1: Scoping and feasibility 2) Phase 2: Detailed planning 3) Phase 3: Project Delivery 4) Phase 4: Close and Evaluation As a part of Phases 1 and 2 significant work was done with all the teams within the organisation about determining the future state that the organisation wanted to get to. It was found that by involving the teams from this early stage it helped to begin raising the profile of Asset Management and its importance, further to not only raising the profile it also helped to engage staff from an early stage of the project which the project delivery team benefited from. Upon completion of the detailed planning phase the following key deliverables were required from the new AMIS: 1) Proactive Condition Assessments 2) Mobile Field Worker 3) Long Term Budget Modelling 4) Maintenance Planning & Scheduling 5) Single Source of Truth A tender process was undertaken to

3 determine which AMIS would best provide CTTG with the required key deliverables within the required budget constraints. The decision was made that Assetic was the vendor of choice. Asset Management Strategy The development and implementation of the organisations Asset Management Strategy through the MACK program has provided EM s and staff with the key focus areas for the next 10 year period, this period aligns with the organisations current strategic plan. The AM Strategy identifies the 3 key focus areas for the organisation and allows the measurement of the impact of the MACK program against the strategic priorities. As the EM s have an understanding of the focus areas and as a result are supportive of funding submissions that directly relate to the strategic priorites. MACK AMIS Implementation The implementation of the new AMIS was undertaken over a 2 year period and saw the engagement of a full time IT Project Manager to oversee the implementation and the creation of a new role within Strategic Assets of the Assets Business Administrator that would work with the Project Manager to ensure the successful implementation and ongoing management of the AMIS. The business case outlined key requirement of the project and these were continually referenced during the implementation to keep the project focussed and try to help minimise the deviation from the original scope. Assetic mydata & mypredictor The initial implementation was for the Assetic mydata and mypredictor on desktop solutions and the accompanying AssetCloud mobility platform that sat alongside mydata. This implementation required extraction of data from Civica Authority and a number of spreadsheets and databases that were scattered around the organisation. The data migration saw the cleansing and migration of over 58,000 assets into the new mydata system. The migration and collation of the multiple datasets into a single source of truth, has meant that can both the Asset Owners and the Finance team are always referencing the same data. With the Strategic Assets team acting as a conduit between the two teams, there is now a relationship in which both teams understand the other s roles and expectations and can work together moving forward for the benefit of CTTG. With the successful migration of the data the development and implementation of the mypredictor long term planning tool was undertaken. This tool has seen significant growth in the maturity of CTTG s roads asset renewal planning and has allowed for the organisation to begin making smarter long term decisions based around condition data to continue meeting the communities expectation while ensuring we a fiscally responsible. Mobilising the Blue Collar Workforce Mobility is something that is changing the way CTTG does business and long term can provide better information to customers in a timely fashion while supporting our field staff in the maintenance and renewal of our assets. The current process of pieces of paper being passed between workers has been identified as a key area in which significant efficiencies can be gained through the use of mobile devices. Desktop vs Cloud While the mydata software was a mature desktop solution, the AssetCloud solution lacked the mobility sophistication required by the organisation to meet the requirements of our business case, but more so the empowerment of the blue collar workforce. The decision was made to move to the Assetic Cloud solution which contained much more of the capability and sophistication required by CTTG. The ability for our Customer Centre staff to receive meaningful updates in real time about asset related customer requests became an important aspect of the MACK AMIS project. This required significant system integration to be built between Civica Authority CRM and Assetic Cloud. While this required significant investment of time to develop the integration the end result has seen the Customer Centre being provided with more detailed and useful

4 information that can be passed onto the customer, more than that it has also meant that when a customer calls there is no need to contact the field staff directly to obtain updates as these are readily available in the Authority CRM system. Assetic Cloud The MACK steering group made the decision to become an early adopter of the Assetic Cloud system and the organisation has seen some benefits realisation from the beginning. As an early adopter we also have the ability to help shape the software and provide feedback from the end users to help make the system suit their needs. The use of 3 operational pilot teams that were the most open to the new software and technology as well as being fully aware and understanding of their internal team processes to provide testing of the new system proved imperative. It was these teams that enabled the MACK project to understand how the mobilisation was going to impact them and how we could be begin to manage this significant change. Change Management With any significant project, particularly projects that change the way employees do business, guiding staff through the change is the most important part of the project. Without successful change management often the change doesn t embed itself within the organisation. The key to the success of MACK has been through strong ongoing two-way communication with staff. From the beginning staff were involved in helping to define the current business processes and identifying the key outputs of their teams and as the AMIS implementation has progressed staff have been kept informed of the project progress. A change management plan using the Procis ADKAR methodology was used within the AMIS project and has helped to determine where the hold points for change are and which areas to focus on to ensure staff moves through the change successfully. Empowering Staff The key to the success of MACK has been by providing training and education to field staff about how what they do is not just fixing something but impacts on asset life, long term financial effects and the like. This education has helped to provide significance to the workforce and ensure they understand that what they do matters and impacts on the greater community. Another key has been involving all staff on the MACK journey and particularly through the AMIS implementation. This has been done through regular interaction with the field staff and ensuring they are able to have input in the configuration of the maintenance areas where they are the technical experts. This has seen a level of ownership being taken by the staff that are going to be affected by change and has seen field staff being open to change rather than pushing against it. The role of the executive sponsor has been imperative in supporting the MACK program and helping with the empowerment of staff. The organisation has seen significantly higher buy in when staff have been encouraged and recognised by a senior executive, particularly when this recognition has been made in front of their peers. Celebrate Wins A key emphasis of MACK has been to celebrate even the small wins with staff and ensure they understand that even the smallest win helps the overall program. CTTG has seen a significant change in attitude from field staff involved after key stakeholders (Directors, Managers) make note of their positive involvement in project outcomes. This emphasis on ensuring staff feel significant in what they are doing has made the change that little bit easier. Consolidate With the 3 pilot teams currently using the new mobile solution, it needs to be understood that each of these teams will progress at different rates. The implementation of on-going training both for individual and groups along with further development of online training modules to help support the teams until the system becomes embedded. The 3 pilot teams can then act as champions to provide further

5 support to each new team that moves to the mobile solution. Measurement With every implementation it becomes imperative that we are able to measure the organisation and how the implementation has impacted both financially and through the morale and engagement of staff. Management. He is passionate about local government and how better asset management can help to benefit the community, he has been a part of the ongoing implementation of mobile solutions for the field staff in helping to maintain assets. The MACK AMIS implementation has provided the organisation with the ability to better measure our KPI s and help better define and monitor our community service levels. This understanding and measurement will allow the organisation going forward to better determine where and what to spend funding on while still continuing to meet the service levels. It is estimated upon completion of implementation that the removing the duplication of effort by the 23 team leaders of field staff will save the organisation nearly 6000 hours per year, this equates to over $195,000 Conclusion MACK has been the guiding program for CTTG through the AMIS implementation which has seen significant structural change and then further change management for the organisation through the implementation of mobile solutions. The organisation has made deliberate attempts to help increase the awareness of Asset Management and has used numerous tools to help support the organisational change including emphasising the importance of celebrating wins and ensuring employees feel significant in what they do. The efficiencies that will be gained for the organisation by using technology to mobilise the organisation will benefit not only the staff but the greater community. Author Biography Ben Clark, BSustEnv(GeospatInfSys), MSurv Ben Clark is an Asset Management professional with experience in both local government and the private sector. He is currently working at the City of Tea Tree Gully in helping the organisation to grow Asset