Overview
Government agencies around the world are responsible for providing a multitude of services to their communities. This includes the management of everything from repairing a roadway to collecting rubbish in a park.
Glen Eira City Council is no exception. The Council required a solution that would help it make informed decisions about critical public infrastructure assets, while also maintaining a tight budget. Working with Brightly, which was later acquired by Siemens, the Council implemented the Confirm and Confirm Connect solutions to manage its asset portfolio, increase operational efficiency and improve service to the community.
Challenges
Without an efficient solution to manage its assets, the Council struggled with conveying information to staff and maintaining infrastructure. Its responsiveness fell short of the community’s expectations. Like many local authorities, the Council faced increasing pressure to respond efficiently to customer requests and ongoing budget constraints.
The Council recognized that it needed to improve its efficiency and cost savings by adopting a more dynamic approach to live in-field asset maintenance. Implementing an enterprise asset management solution integrated with existing corporate systems would enable the Council to address these challenges and more. Benefits include streamlined staff communication, improved resource allocation and job management, stronger contractor accountability, reduced risk and better service delivery to the community.
Solution
The Council turned to Confirm enterprise asset management and Confirm Connect mobile asset management solutions. Confirm provides government bodies with the insight to make informed decisions on repair, maintenance and investment for critical public infrastructure assets.
Using mobile technology, Confirm Connect enables a real-time, two-way flow of information between asset operations and the field workforce. Users can manage inspections, surveys and work crew activities on site. The solution allows staff to view live task lists, update asset locations, conditions and attributes, and complete maintenance activities and inspections.
Additionally, Confirm Connect enables inspectors, surveyors and work crews to spend more time in the community completing critical jobs. They can utilize scarce resources efficiently and maintain accountability at all levels.
Benefits
Improved record keeping and live updates to assets have enabled the Council to successfully manage risks and lower liability costs. “For the last three years, we’ve achieved 100 percent on our insurance audits. Previously, we didn’t have that information,” says the Council’s Asset Management System Administrator.
The Council has also tightened its procurement process for maintenance works undertaken by contractors. By implementing an interface between the Confirm application and the Council’s finance system, each Confirm work order automatically creates a purchase order in the finance system.
“The interface from Confirm to Council’s financial management information system is a seamless process. Monthly postings include accounting entries such as depreciation, additions, disposals and revaluations without manual intervention. This results in accurate recording of financial data,” says Luke Shannon of Planning and Development. There are also interfaces to the customer request management and GIS systems.
“One of the biggest benefits of the Confirm solution is the sharing of information between departments,” says the Asset Management System Administrator. “The asset register is used as the basis for recording all operational activities and is the repository of the Council’s fixed assets. Finance uses this system to get what they need in relation to asset accounting. Before Confirm, there were spreadsheets and lists. Finance had its own lists, while other areas had their lists. There was no central core register.”
The Council also utilizes the Confirm Connect mobile asset management solution to respond to customer requests and to record asset inspections and maintenance activities while in the field. This improves the timeliness of updates, and increases efficiency among users, including a reduction in paperwork and elimination of duplicate entries. The Council performs work more quickly, providing better service to the community.
“Before implementing the Confirm solution, we were not operating as efficiently as we could have been. We have dramatically improved efficiency and accountability across the whole Council, including what we do and how we do it,” says the Asset Management System Administrator.