IDS and Industry Adaption – NZ’s Asset Management Success Story Revealed (Video)

Transcription

Good morning, it’s Ross Waugh here from Inframanage.com and in this video we’re continuing our discussion about Infrastructure Decision Support, the New Zealand IDS project.

One of the hidden secrets of New Zealand asset management over the last 20 years. With me is David Fraser and Theuns Henning.

And in this video, we’re going to be discussing just some recent changes in the industry in the last two years. It had been quite exciting for the IDS project and just another stage in this adaptation as industry needs change.

Theuns, could you tell us a little bit more about what’s happened in the last two years?

Theuns: Ross I think one of the highlights in the last two years has been particularly a council in New Zealand down in the South Island, it’s the Central Otago District Council.

In the previous video I spoke about the councils that didn’t participate in the project from the beginning and Central Otago was one of them. It took them ten years before they saw the need to pull in the model.

They always thought that the perhaps their data wasn’t good enough. It’s a very small network, sealed road network of around 350 kilometers and never saw the return that they would get on undertaking the model of their network.

At the stage when they’ve started considering it, they were looking at making some savings on their network and the Council was rightfully concerned about reducing the investment on the network and what the possible consequences might be.

The dTIMS model was run on their network and had a fantastic outcome. It confirmed what the engineers believe to be the perfect strategy for that network.

But I think the greatest value was now having the evidence, scientifically-based evidence in the outputs that they could present to their Council who then accepted the saving with confidence.

Ross:   One of the things I know also Theuns about that Central Otago model, the design model that you did – it has been so successful though that it ended as a case study in the International Infrastructure Management Manual. Were they also calibrated, the model.

They got a very senior contract foreman and then their own senior foreman who went out and check the model production. So you have this human and model calibration going on and they were all lined up and that was, the Council, their decision makers took the two together and were happy to adjust their investment profile.

Theuns: Correct. I have to give credit to the Council in terms of their staff how they adopted the model as part of their process. They decided to do it and then and with that commitment made a great success out of it. I think it’s to date one of the big flagships that demonstrates what we are about to achieve in New Zealand.

David:  And Ross, there’s actually another aspect about Central Otago that we haven’t picked up on that. And that is if you look at the statistics across New Zealand, Central Otago would have one of the lowest cost per kilometer of any of our roading networks that are based on some very good glacial foundations.

Their roads are relatively cheaper in terms of some of the other comparative councils to maintain and to run. And they have very good riding characteristics.

So at a snapshot, at a high level, you would never pick Central Otago as one of those people that perhaps you could save lots of money with and get – the truth is that when the model went in, some tremendous savings were generated just with a far more confidence level than how the road was performing in particular.

Ross:  And I think because I brought the case study up for the International Infrastructure Management Manual, Theuns I know a little bit about this one. There was the introduction of some new data collection techniques as part of the development of that model which is another thing that’s happening in the industry in the last couple of years.

Theuns: Correct. The model that we have developed in New Zealand was developed on the basis of we can do a model regardless of the status of the data within a council. However, starting with the model process then gives the data so much more purpose and then focus improved data practices perhaps newer data items to come in over time.

Over time the robustness of the outcome then improves with it. We’ve seen tremendous differences between councils who started earlier with the data as today versus the council that did not do it.

Ross:  And do you think that’s just the modeling gives them a focus for the data collection and cleanup and end up knowing what they don’t know? Is that the…

Theuns: Correct Ross. It’s absolutely that. The sense of purpose is everything. And by giving the data purpose and analyze it to a very high degree exposes some of the weak areas but it also brings forward that aspect of turning data into useful information.

David:  Ross we can actually summarize that from our observations is that those who decided not to model say ten years ago because they didn’t have good data, generally still don’t have good data. But those who decided to model in spite of their lack of robust data have now some best data sets in the country. And that whole modeling and interaction of data have encouraged that far better ownership and far better application of using the information available.

Ross:   So just to summarize for our viewers, what’s come out in the last couple of years has been the changing use of data, improving your data sets and the model’s really focusing you on that, but also taking this to strategic and logical view that the dTIMS and IDS processes has got is working with very small networks in New Zealand much more perhaps than originally imagined. We’re getting some really good gains out of that.

It doesn’t matter what size your network is, it’s worth considering.

Thanks for watching this video, we encourage you to watch the next part of the series as well.