How Does IDS Work in Practice – NZ’s Asset Management Success Story Revealed (Video)

Transcription

Good morning, it’s Ross Waugh here from Inframanage, and we’re continuing our series on New Zealand’s IDS, Infrastructure Decision Support, one of the best keep secret of our asset management industry over the last 20 or years. With me is David Fraser and Theuns Henning.

And the question I guess a lot of viewers and people looking in at this video we have, Gentlemen is how does IDS actually work in practice?

Theuns: Ross we often get that question as you’re saying. There’s not a single answer to the question. I guess one of the success factors something that we will talk about more in the next video, is we adapted as the sector has developed.

In the beginning, there was a sense that local government would like to have these skills internally, to run their own models, do the analytics themselves. Later on, the industry changed with a lot of services, professional services we’ve farmed out to the consulting industry.

At that stage, much of the modeling then were undertaken outside by private providers. Which then brought the need for IDS to take the strongest steering role in that and through our consortium and the collaboration around the consortium in the development team, we’ve replicated that structure and we offer a better service to all our clients.

So if they want to get the model executed, they contact IDS. They have the choice of whether they go through the formal procurement process but the best man around the table in the consortium will then be chosen to do the physical analysis for that agency.

We then in the process also then have the necessary quality assurance processes in place. And also make sure that the outcome we delivered to our end client is then well understood in terms of what it means strategically for the investment, future investment and to their maintenance.

Ross:   And David just in terms you’ve had a leadership role with wider industry around IDS, can you explain to our viewers how that’s worked in practice?

David:  Yes Ross, I think it’s quite interesting and I think we could go back to the industry as a whole as more things were contracted out from within the local authority sector. The local authority engineer’s organization embraced those from outside of – of being the immediate employees of this sector, they embraced them into the Local Government Engineer’s Association.

So there’s been a collective and collaborative approach lead from top down. And the great thing about the model is it’s a strategic tool and we really try to encourage the ownership of the strategic tool within the local authority sector, in other words, the client role – but getting support from those who are providing the services both consultants and contractors to embrace that high-level long-term vision and understand what it is all about and getting the right ownership into the delivery of the works.

Theuns: I may add to that David. The modeling process itself is but a very small component of the entire asset management spectrum, yet it is of strategic importance because of course that sets the future investment planning and also the level of service that you would like to achieve on your networks.

So I guess through the consortium, we’ve provided that independently to the councils and then they have the options whether they’re going to use the outcomes themselves or create an external provider into coming out doing that strategical planning for them.

David:  And Ross, picking up from that small component that’s actually also a very vital component, the New Zealand government has recognized that infrastructure doesn’t align itself with the terms of political elections but infrastructure has much longer life.

And so that which has called upon New Zealand to produce a 30-year Infrastructure Strategy for all of its own infrastructure assets. And this tool is actually a fantastic tool for identifying were the trends going to be, where the investment needs will be over the life of the assets.

Ross:   And just picking up on the New Zealand government, Theuns is talking about the developing along a long-term investment profile that’s just take you straight to funders.

Now, I know IDS has had quite an interaction with the New Zealand Transportation Agency who do fund a quite a bit of the road infrastructure work in New Zealand. Just unpack for us some of them, how that’s worked in practice with IDS and helping investment prioritization.

David:  Yes the New Zealand Transport Agency has been a great support of the project and they have shared the funding with the local authorities, so they’ve encouraged local authorities to get involved and through that process they’ve actually supported the modelling but also scrutinize the outcomes and look to understand how can be best used for long-term investment.

Ross:   And that’s a very good new stories. So we wrap that up here and thank you for watching this video.

We’d like to encourage you to watch the next one. We were just going to be looking a little bit more about some of the success stories with IDS. Thanks for watching.