The Barossa Council optimises asset management and workforce efficiency

The Challenge & Opportunity

As a world-renowned premium food and wine region just an hour from Adelaide, it’s no wonder more people are moving to the Barossa Valley. Population rates are expected to double over the next 25 years, with an additional 10,000 homes proposed to accommodate approximately 25,000 new residents. This growth places increasing pressure on the Barossa Council to sustainably manage its existing assets while planning additional infrastructure to meet future demands. 

According to Glen Carter, Manager of Infrastructure & Environmental Operations at the Barossa Council, it was vital that the Council shifted to adopt a more holistic and streamlined approach to maintaining, operating and upgrading its assets. 

“Having reliable infrastructure is essential to the health and wellbeing of our expanding community. To gain greater investment clarity around where the Barossa will grow and what infrastructure is needed, we needed a better understanding of the state of our assets today and how to deliver sustainable levels of service to present and future customers.”

The Council’s biggest challenge was that they used multiple disparate systems to record asset data and perform maintenance, making it difficult to prioritise maintenance jobs and plan for future infrastructure investments. 

“Our team was working between several different programs and Excel spreadsheets to record, program, schedule and close out maintenance works,” explained Glen. “We also relied on numerous manual processes, like printing out hard copies of job cards, which slowed our team down. 

“Working across multiple systems also made it hard for management to leverage our data for future maintenance, renewal and replacement planning. We needed a more consistent way to capture asset data and work undertaken in the field to help us model future scenarios and support decision-making.”

The Solution

The Barossa Council turned to Brightly for help, entering a collaborative partnership that resulted in the Council rolling out the cloud-based Brightly enterprise asset management (EAM) platform including the Mobility and Maintenance modules and Predictor for predictive asset management modelling. 

“Brightly worked with our staff, particularly our maintenance planners and GIS officer, to ensure that the system was configured to suit the way our teams were structured, which is a little different from other organisations.” 

“This was no problem for Brightly, who tailored a solution for us and guided us through the implementation process. Brightly ran separate targeted trainings for our management team and field staff and were always available for support whenever we reached out,” explained Glen. 

With Brightly’s solutions, the Council now has a single platform to capture and analyse asset data and allows the team to raise a work order on the spot if a defect is identified during an assessment, improving response times. 

“Brightly gives us a single hub for all our asset information. It has also helped us identify holes within our data, so we know what else to capture when conducting condition assessments.” 

Glen said introducing field-based mobility has been a key advantage. “Brightly has helped transition our council in a very contemporary manner by enabling our office-based staff to communicate in a much more timely and effective way with field-based operators.”

“Since implementing the Brightly Mobility app, we’ve been able to mobilise our workforce more efficiently across the region and better utilise our personnel and fleet. We can now send work orders directly to our maintenance crew’s devices, complete with all information they need – including attached documents and photos – enabling them to receive, action and close out any tasks while still in the field.” 

Predictor has also helped the Council model long-term funding and service scenarios to show the potential impact of their decision-making on asset health, service delivery and budgets. 

“With Predictor, we can model different funding scenarios and compare their impact on infrastructure health and budget, which is particularly important as we welcome more citizens to the area. Predictor will play a key role in supporting our capital planning decisions as we consider the next 30 years of growth in the Barossa.”

Results 

Since moving to Brightly, Glen says the Council now has a lot more confidence in their data to support their asset decision-making and planning. 

“With recent population growth, climate change and other factors, the Council’s priorities in managing assets and funding allocations may change over time, which is why it is so important that we continue to collect data and review our infrastructure asset management plan.” 

“Brightly gives us confidence that the data we’re capturing, and the integration of our corporate systems will help us make long-term, sustainable and informed decisions to best equip us to manage our infrastructure and assets into the future.” 

The Brightly platform is already driving tangible improvements, as demonstrated during its recent inspection program of 560km of unsealed roads in the region. 

“By inspecting zones and mobilising graders based on needs as documented in our Brightly system, rather than customer requests or dues dates, we reduced having to grade customer requests by 33% – saving us many hours of work.” 

The software has also improved the council’s ability to respond to urgent maintenance needs, with jobs being sent straight to field staff with all details. “We can also set priorities for tasks with due dates, allowing us to schedule works based on risk and urgency.” 

Looking Ahead 

Already, the Council has identified future improvements to be made, thanks to scenario modelling using Predictor. 

“It will be good to see the next round of our condition data and the changes this will have on our future modelling. Most importantly, the continual updating and improvement of our data helps provide evidencebased acknowledgement of the work currently being undertaken and a solid background for future decisions.” 

“As we continue to improve our data, we look forward to seeing how else we can use scenario modelling to show the impact of decision-making across various criteria and asset types, as well as to support our EOFY processes.”