Clarence Valley community benefits from tech upgrade

29 November 2022 – Clarence Valley Council has upped the ante when it comes to the management of the $2 billion of local roads, bridges and water infrastructure in its care after upgrading to a new asset management platform through TechnologyOne’s OneCouncil Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.

“We have better visibility of our operations, which helps us be more effective and efficient. One of our bridge crews completed all of their jobs in half the usual time and they have been able to take on more projects,” said Kate Maginnity, Finance and Systems Manager.

“We now see defect reports immediately, which means we can respond more quickly to fix them. That’s a better experience of council for residents, since people see that reporting defects makes a difference. It also reduces the disruption to the community,” she said.

The Clarence Valley employee base was quick to take advantage of the council’s new works system. Within the first six months of it being in operation, the council bridge crew had completed their year-long maintenance inspection program, utilising maintenance schedules, defects and work orders to increase the efficiency of the crew.

Additionally, better project planning and the ability to bulk procure materials saw the bridge crew  complete their allocation of bridge replacements in six months. This allowed the council to allocate more bridge replacements internally instead of using contractors, resulting in a reduction in costs. Clarence Valley Council serves a community of 50,000 people on the far north coast of New South Wales. It covers a large area of more than 10,000 square kilometres and a vast number of buildings, roads, footpaths, water infrastructure and, of course, bridges---this is the Northern Rivers after all.

The region has experienced more than its fair share of adverse weather events in the last few years, with large areas affected by bushfires in the summer of 2019/2020 and others experiencing significant flooding in February 2022; factors that would challenge any asset management effort.

According to Ms Maginnity, a few years ago the council recognised it had a growing problem in keeping up with that challenge: “We had a lot of separate systems for asset management and many paper-based or manual processes. It was time and resource intensive and prone to delays and errors.”

“To better manage the community assets we were responsible for, we needed a single source of truth. We needed to know what condition they were in were in, what we needed to do to maintain them for the future and what was the most efficient way of doing that,” she said.

“Fortunately, we had adopted TechnologyOne’s software for our corporate systems some time ago, so we knew what the solution looked like. We knew we wanted a cloud-based system that would help us better manage our assets and also talk to our other technology systems,” Ms Maginnity said.

The solution has seen manual paperwork replaced by tablets that council crew members take out into the field. That not only reduces travel time for the crew but also allows the council to update field staff on job data, remotely, throughout the day. This ensures community assets, like bridge, are regularly maintained so community members can continue to use them safely.

Kate Maginnity says TechnologyOne’s broad local government experience was an asset too.

“For us, one of the key benefits of working with TechnologyOne was their experience in working with local governments. It gave us the confidence that, whatever the challenge was, it was likely that they had dealt with it before and could advise us,” she said.

TechnologyOne’s Chief Executive Officer, Ed Chung, said the company has been helping local government authorities in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom work more efficiently and effectively for more than 30 years by making technology simpler.

“We understand technology and we understand the industry; we support hundreds of councils, knowing each one has priorities that are unique to their community. We’re constantly innovating and over the last ten years have helped many councils use SaaS technology to digitally transform their operations to deliver for their community,” Mr Chung said.

For Ms Maginnity, the partnership with TechnologyOne was a chance to leverage decades’ worth of local government experience in a best-in-class solution.

“From the start we took a very collaborative approach. We’ve seen that if you involve TechnologyOne early and listen to their advice you get a better outcome. In my view you don’t get the best results by taking a closed-door approach and dictating the way things are done,” she said.