Oral Presentation Public Works Conference 2022

The City of Whittlesea is amongst the fastest growing local government areas (LGA) in Australia. It faces the challenge of balancing the maintenance needs of an expanding portfolio of building assets comprising a mix of mature and heritage properties while at the same time rolling out new community facilities to meet its rapidly expanding constituency.

In 2019, the City of Whittlesea made the strategic decision to reinvent its approach to the delivery of property services by moving to an integrated asset management model based on the ISO55001 framework that would create value for ratepayers and put facility users at the centre of the service model.

The project has involved the reengineering of the asset and facilities management team, the procurement and appointment of a specialist facilities management company to inject expertise and drive change, the deployment of a new asset and maintenance technology platform, the completion of a whole of portfolio asset condition audit including the collection of asset data and the preparation of capital lifecycle plans for the council’s building assets. Additionally, API based interfaces support full integration with Council’s CRM, finance, asset management applications and BMS and IoT platforms.

The transitional phase of the project was delivered over a 12-week period, in a Covid-19 restricted environment and has now been in full operation for just over 12 months.

Key outcomes from both a Council and stakeholder perspectives include

• The service model leverages mobile technology to provide facility users with real time status updates through a self-service portal, business intelligence dashboards provide asset performance insights, such as mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) and the asset management dashboard provides 10-year lifecycle replacement forecasts that re-calibrate based upon replacement rules and asset performance.
• Tangible reductions in asset maintenance costs and improved levels of customer service.
• Improved response and rectification times for works.

• No Lost Time or Medical treatment injuries recorded across 22,765 working hours, which exceeds industry best practice.
• A structured approach to the implementation, completion, and review of works with a comprehensive procurement and supplier relationship management framework.
• A complete Building Condition Audit, with over 66,000 assets collected, this allows for more accurate modelling of capital expenditure over the next 5+ years.
• A continuous site inspection program to identify any backlog or safety related items.
• Detailed reporting and regular stakeholder meetings ensure transparency at all times.
• Thorough accounting and cost review process, allowing for accurate allocation and review of costs at a facility level.

This case study will explore key learnings and practical examples of how the project was developed and implemented, the key benefits and the learnings which will be relevant to conference attendees. 

The presentation has been endorsed by the Head of Assets and Facilities at the City of Whittlesea.