The challenge and opportunity
The Department of Education (DoE) in Tasmania faced a classic asset management challenge: to maintain and preserve their portfolio of essential community facilities in a manner that managed, costed and mitigated future risks to service delivery.
- Data improvement was required to objectively identify at-risk assets, obtain funding and allocate it appropriately
- Planning was budget-driven, with funding programs dictating services to be delivered
- Executive decision makers needed data-driven strategies to inform investment decisions about the assets for which they were ultimately responsible
- Opportunity to improve clarity, consistency and confidence in processes and ultimately advance asset management maturity
- Evidence-based 25+ year plan required to objectively prove funding needs to state government
Chris Grace, Asset Management and Planning Coordinator for the Tasmania DoE, says, “For us, building a case for current and future funding was really important; there has never been a better time than now to ensure scarce funding is spent optimally.”
The solution
Grace and the team at DoE chose to partner with Brightly subject matter experts. (Brightly was later acquired by Siemens.) They kept the journey’s end goal in mind, right from the start: true, evidence-based management of assets, and an understanding of current and future state to secure critical funding. This strategic mindset helped put usable reporting outputs into the DoE’s hands within a month of data collection completion.
The journey DoE undertook looked like this:
- Establish a policy framework: Support decisions and create consistency in how assets are managed
- Identify the assets: What they are, where they are, owned vs. leased, ultimate responsibility
- Collect data strategically: Condition, lifecycle and cost — collect data that informs key decisions
- Track and manage: Shift from reactive processes to managing according to asset lifecycle cost
- Provide purpose-built facilities: Understand future educational needs
- Establish processes: Objective and consistent prioritization and funding allocation
- Map out the future: Determine long-term requirements and subsequent gaps
- Empower decisions: Create a meaningful four-year strategic asset management plan, with the ability to plan for 25+ years
The power and flexibility in the Predictor platform, coupled with the DoE’s strategic focus, enabled a targeted and efficient approach to data collection and application of that asset information. For example, given provision of education spaces is paramount to DoE, all teaching spaces were assessed in granular detail, while administrative spaces were given a simple 1–5 overall score.
This targeted approach was further applied to the management of bathrooms to support student safety. Bathrooms were assessed for anti-bullying, given that they are traditionally a high-request area for these safety concerns.
This extra layer of assessment was essential in presenting a compelling, evidence-based story to the State Department when DoE was asked to submit a COVID-19 stimulus funding submission in early 2020. It was successful — the DoE received additional funding of AU$16.5M over four years.
The results
- Meaningful four-year strategic plan in place; ability to plan 25+ years
- Strong position for 2020 COVID-19 stimulus funding and control of the future
- Successful receipt of additional AU$16.5M stimulus funding to date
- Clear picture of the assets they are responsible for and how their decisions impact the community into the future
- Ability to provide decision makers with accurate, evidence-based plans, removing political bias from project selection processes
- Lifecycle scenarios to optimize investments in education facilities based on current service provision and future utilization and occupancy
Ultimately, says Grace, “We now have confidence our data is painting a true picture, and our information is powerful — at the click of a few buttons we can show the decision makers where money is best invested.”