City of Newcastle manages assets

By Lilia Guan
 
The City of Newcastle Council has selected Infor’s Hansen Asset Management Software product to streamline its asset management system.
Infor’s software product will track and maintain the Council’s assets, evaluate associated costs to manage assets smarter and have greater visibility across departments.
 
The council’s director City Assets – Steve Edmonds – told Government News, Newcastle councils was using a paper-based spreadsheet – with manual input of data – to keep records of its extensive set of assets.
 
Mr Edmonds said the councils have about $1.7 billion worth of diverse assets including; GIS; drainage; bridges; roads; land; fleets; and paths.
 
“We needed a standard product to pull information from from various data fields,” he said.
 
“We needed a corporate asset management system that would talk to our finance system, geographical system, human resources and our OHS system.”
 
Mr Edmonds said its aggregated system of asset management, didn’t give the council enough data to help it make smarter decisions.
 
“It’s important for councils constrained on funding, to be able to make smarter decisions,” he said.
 
Also adding to the council’s problems was the recording of assets by field workers.
 
“Our remote workers would have to record work orders onto paper and then bring it back into the office,” Mr Edmonds said.
 
The mobile component powered by KernMobile will be critical for the Council’s staff, allowing them to collect data in the field and in real-time, providing greater accuracies and productivity gains.
 
“Field workers can now input information through a mobile product – which gives them more time out on the road.”
 
Mr Edmonds said if assts in councils aren’t properly managed, then they “won’t function” as they should.

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0 thoughts on “City of Newcastle manages assets

  1. It would be very useful for us to hear from any council’s who have managed to successfully integrate new risk factors to assets such as climate change impacts eg. coastal and catchment flooding into Hansen or similar asset assessment software.

    Anne

  2. Coliban Water and I are presenting a paper at the Inforum conference on Tuesday 20th Sept on the topic of using the Advanced Asset Management functionality within Hansen 8 for such things. It is not specifically covering climate change but does cover including risk factors for asset renewals. If the informmation is held against the asset it can be used in decision making.
    Richard Mansell

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