The challenge and opportunity
Receiving a quality education is recognized as the most important driver for improving health, life expectancy and the economy. For the Tasmanian Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP), delivering better educational outcomes and brighter futures for Tasmanians is their number one priority. A key part of this is providing quality facilities for children to learn in and play on, from classrooms to outdoor equipment.
The DECYP manages a diverse range of facilities and assets to deliver public education, including schools, library and youth services, child and family learning centers, residential properties and offices.
With many of its buildings facing age-related issues, the department faced classic management challenges:
Boosting maintenance efficiency: The facilities team were juggling a higher number of work order enquiries and requests each week and making do using a finance based platform that was not fit for purpose. They needed a solution that did more than generate work orders — they wanted to see where the work orders were going, their status and other key metrics to facilitate maintenance work being done faster and understanding reasons for failures.
Objectively prioritizing upgrades: To determine which facilities had the greatest needs, the department needed to be able to objectively prioritize facilities using a combination of condition data and recurrent maintenance failure data so that it was fair and equitable to all without any bias.
Securing additional critical funding: Facing constant pressures to address the problems that come with aging assets, DECYP needed to secure additional Tasmanian State Government funding. The question was how they could provide a compelling and evidence-based proposal that proved its funding needs now and in the future.
The solution
DECYP saw these challenges as an opportunity to improve the accuracy, consistency and confidence in its data and processes, and advance its asset management maturity to the next level.
The asset management and planning team at DECYP partnered with Brightly — which was later acquired by Siemens — whose subject matter experts helped ensure the journey’s end goal was in mind from the start: more evidence-based management of its assets and a clearer, more accurate understanding of the current and future state to secure critical funding.
After establishing an asset management policy framework, DECYP focused on improving its asset register using the Brightly Assetic platform (now a part of the Siemens portfolio). All teaching spaces were assessed in granular detail, capturing asset and condition data into one centralized hub. Now, DECYP can easily see the state of all its classrooms.
DECYP then applied lifecycle scenario modeling using Predictor to understand its long-term requirements, subsequent gaps and climate change risks. Armed with this information, DECYP created a four-year strategic asset management plan (SAMP) plan to optimize its investments based on current and future utilization and occupancy for the next 25 years and beyond.
“Our investment in asset systems, data and SAM enables us to meaningfully inform critical decisions about our $4 billion-plus in assets at a cost that is a minute percentage of our overall portfolio value,” says the team.
Next came the maintenance module, a pre-configured work management solution to support DECYP’s maintenance processes. The maintenance module is also used to help the facilities management team answer questions in real time about particular assets.
“Typically, in facility management, maintenance is governed by work orders. However, it’s only part of the equation. We also take a significant number of calls per week requesting generalized built environment guidance on a facility,” says the team. “These range from queries on the National Construction Code, to political inquiries to support parliamentary questions, and simpler things, like heating systems not working. With the maintenance module, we can access core data sets in Assetic to handle both work orders and work requests — providing us with immediate answers and halving the time we spend on calls.”
These solutions are highly configurable and tailored to infrastructure assets. With a framework that provides appropriate asset data that is designed around compliance and ease of use, they focus entirely on asset management rather than a compromise across other functions.
The results
With its new system in place, DECYP now has a much clearer picture of the assets they are responsible for, and how their decisions will impact the community in the future.
Repairs are also being done faster, thanks to the fit-for-purpose maintenance module, which is seamlessly integrated with its Assetic asset register. The team at DECYP is getting time back to do more valuable tasks, with work order efficiency improving by 70%.
According to DECYP, the maintenance module enables the team to provide accurate and consistent information to all stakeholders, from schools and community associations to local politicians, architects and engineers.
“We can easily slice and dice the information to suit the audience we are working with. Being able to respond to questions in real time builds credibility in us, and in our data,” says the team. “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.”
Capturing all their asset-related data and using it to perform lifecycle scenario analysis also enables DECYP to present a compelling, evidence-based story on their funding needs to the State Department — resulting in multiple successful funding rounds.
DECYP presents its funding evidence to decision-makers in the form of investment priority rankings, with 17 schools ranked a top priority for capital funding based on condition profile and capacity needs for current enrolments. It achieved this by capturing even more detailed condition data on each facility, breaking it down by room — collecting data for over 34,950 rooms.
This data and prioritization helped DECYP secure government funding for 15 of the 17 priority-one sites as part of the government’s election commitment.
The team says, “Brightly [Siemens] is a key starting point for how we prioritize our 200-plus education sites and secure funding. By being able to base our funding requests on data, we have seen the greatest investment in education infrastructure in Tasmania’s history.”
DECYP has experienced numerous other benefits from the asset management platform, including reducing climate change risk and insurance costs.
DECYP said, “Using the Brightly [Siemens] maintenance module, we've been able to better develop minor works programs to reduce our risk profile for aged and failing infrastructure including switchboards, roofs and fire systems.”
“There are distinct financial benefits as well. Not only does our proactive maintenance prevent significant damage costs, but our insurance costs are less. It also better informs us of the cause of maintenance requests, such as understanding which buildings can’t cope with capacity versus buildings that have a deteriorating element, such as letting the rain in.”
DECYP’s improved maintenance management and ability to secure record-level funding have drawn the attention of other state government departments — setting a best-practice standard in government SAM and delivering tangible results to help its community learn and thrive.