The Challenge & Opportunity
The Essential Services Commission (ESC) regulates the Victorian water industry via price reviews, codes, guidelines and performance monitoring. After a 2012-13 review, the ESC reduced Wannon Water’s renewal budget due to a lack of granular detail, so the agency has had to operate with increasingly constrained resources. This constraint pressure is further enhanced by high labour costs and community pressure against rate increases.
Further, Wannon Water identified a need for asset management process improvement. There was a lack of consistency and no holistic approach to life-cycle modelling based on objective factors such as risk, cost or service levels. This was further complicated by the use of multiple software systems for the asset register, maintenance, asset management plans, and other key data/documents.
Brightly & Wannon Water
In May 2017 Brightly was selected to provide Brightly Predictor for the creation of asset management plans driven by life-cycle assessment modeling, as well as to provide consultancy services to implement, embed and apply the system.
Through strong collaborative relationships with Brightly’s industry specialists, the Wannon Water team was able to implement Predictor for its entire Sewer Network and Water Treatment Plants in just three months. Wannon Water now has granular, data-driven 10-year renewal programs which will result in genuine savings, having selected the optimal outcomes based on scientific scenario modelling.
Further, the ability to include risk as a modelling parameter in Predictor means that all stakeholders, irrespective of background or asset management knowledge, are able to comprehend and consider scenarios in a meaningful way. This engagement enabled the project to proceed with increased visibility and efficiency.
Our collaboration with Brightly has enabled us to unlock huge potential from our asset data, and ultimately justified the investment we have made in our data maturity for many years. We could identify a significant ROI opportunity from the very first asset class that we analysed using Brightly’s tools and expertise - a great case of doing more with less. We are determined to up skill our staff and expand this functionality across our full asset portfolio with Brightly’s support. This will enable us to better communicate our investment options with our executives, optimise our CAPEX budget, and also submit a compelling and evidence-based submission to our regulator in a few years’ time.
Aaron Smith
Branch Manager, Asset Systems
Featured Results
Quick ROI Realisation
- Identification of ~$3M (%23) saving opportunity over the ten-year Sewer Renewal Program
- Advanced from age-based renewal planning to Condition- & Criticality- based planning, enabled by Predictor
What next?
- Comprehensive risk analysis and reporting for executive and board stakeholders, via further advancement of existing models
- Expansion of the modelling coverage to include more asset classes, starting with Sewer Treatment Plants, Pump Stations and the Water Pipe Network
- Development of a comprehensive asset data improvement action plan in collaboration with Brightly experts, using proprietary strategic asset management maturity assessment methodologies
- Further engagement of key stakeholders with boosted reporting power, imbedding modelling outputs in Wannon Water’s corporate Power BI Dashboard (using the Predictor Power BI Template)
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