IDS Success Stories – NZ’s Asset Management Success Story Revealed (Video)

Transcription

Good morning, it’s Ross Waugh here from Inframanage.com and this video is a continuation of our series of videos on Infrastructure Decision Support here in New Zealand, one of our hidden success stories in our asset management journey over the last 20 years or so. I’m here with David Fraser, chairman of IDS and Theuns Henning, the CEO.

And one of the things that have happened with IDS in the 18 years, that’s been, the project’s been running, is there have been some incredible success stories.

And Theuns, I just like to give you the opportunity to tell us more about those successes and the project.

Theuns: Thank you Ross. I think it’s well-known that in the initial stage of any software implementation, it’s new, it’s fresh, and everyone is excited about it. And then over time, the excitement dwindled a little bit as you know.

We have been looking at a coverage across New Zealand for a very long time with a third of the local government, being very active and proactive with their modeling, doing great work. And now the third did something. And we have another third that was watching from the sideline to see how things are going and waiting to get involved.

But then our legislation changed. We’ve got the same requirements as the MAP-21 in the US where local authorities got to do long-term asset management planning running for a 30-year period.

And that really prompted a new energy into the project. And I would say easily today we would be modeling for more than two-thirds of all local authorities in New Zealand and we have the vision of changing that to a hundred percent coverage. I want to model every kilometer of road in New Zealand in the next 2 years.

Ross:   That’s a very good challenge. And I know David, there’s some really really good return on investment out of this project for the industry. You’ve got some numbers there over up to 18 years. Could you just tell us about that?

David:  Yes Ross. Ross, it’s quite interesting when you start to look at the typical numbers that are generated. If we take the average size New Zealand local authority and we’re not talking about the large authority but just the average size, the actual modeling cost turns out to be about half a percent of their transportation or the roading budget for the year.

And when we look at the savings in terms of their maintenance and operations budget and their renewals, it turns out to be around about 16 to 21 percent of savings and that includes some efficiency gains as well.

So not only do they make a huge savings return of around about 32 to 40, in terms of the multiplier, but they’re also in the process of actually improving the condition of the network overall in the long run.

Ross:   So that’s a massive ROI isn’t it? And that’s just been a demonstration of the huge value of this project to the New Zealand transportation industry. Coming off that though, Theuns I know that the project’s extended in the last two years.

Theuns: Absolutely Ross. With the success that we had with transportation and the road industry, there were some of our colleagues in the water sector that’s starting to ask questions and given the Deighton software is flexible to incorporate any type of assets, we have then been looking at developing three water model for New Zealand and we have done that in collaboration with one of our authorities in Dunedin.

And came up with the three-water model templates so we can do the same sort of analysis that we’ve been doing in the past and now that’s also in the water sector. That template is available internationally if anybody is interested in that.

Ross:   And just to wrap up this video, one of the things that still strikes me quite apart from that massive return on investment and just the huge gains we’ve had across the entire transportation sector in New Zealand, has been this IP situation or the IP capture with IDS.

So just in terms of success there, can you give us a little bit more information Theuns?

Theuns: Ross as you mentioned, this is a big success factor for IDS. No matter how many people you have in the room, somebody will come up with a great idea or perhaps a different perspective by looking at the same problem.

Now we will able to capture all of those ideas and share it nationally. So it is available to everybody who’s part of this project and that IP belongs to the New Zealand public sector, so we have kept that way but certainly, everybody is contributing freely to that.

Ross:   And just to wrap that up. That is how you make gains. You know the improvements in sectors are lots and lots of incremental small gains and by collaborating here in New Zealand, we’ve been able to continue to drive that forward.

Thanks for watching this video, we look forward to seeing you in the next one when we continue this IDS story.