A real-time monitoring system is helping Goulburn-Murray Water (GMW) find efficiencies and savings when it comes to maintaining more than $5.1 billion of assets and 10,000km of channels, drains and pipes.
The recently-installed system, which includes four television screens showing live data, provides GMW’s Field Services team with the status of current maintenance activities across the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District, covering an area of approximately 35,000 square kilometers.
The feed uses asset management system Maximo and its mobile application Maximo Anywhere to capture, record and report on the progress of maintenance work.
Issues, such as leaks, are displayed in a red, green and amber status, and the visual tool also records completed jobs and customer service measures.
Costs are also a major focus of the data and are listed by area, broken down to reflect the cost of labour and hours spent maintaining a specific asset.
GMW Works Scheduler and Planning Coordinator Peter Watkins said the system helps create efficiencies, including reducing the costs of labour and materials.
“As a visual tool, it really helps us to effectively plan our maintenance and that’s always going to be a benefit for our customers,” he said.
“We’re also looking at different data sets we can bring in, which will help us drill down even further and look at more effective ways to plan out our maintenance.”
GMW Works Scheduler and Planner Peter Watkins (left) and Maintenance Dispatch Planner Phillip Adornato Maintenance with the centralised monitoring system.
Maintenance planners Phil Adornato, Ty Guiney, Steven Nikolic, Peter Watkins and Paul Sly.
Every day, GMW’s maintenance planners prioritise reactive works such as channel leaks or works on modernised irrigation assets and map out the most effective way to fix the issue.
This means around 8000 work orders are created and issued every year from the team of five maintenance planners.
The data helps the planners spot potential issues that may arise and work with maintenance staff to analyse root causes, make improvements and create new efficiencies.
Maintenance Planner Ty Guiney said the planners are gatekeepers of one of the largest amounts of asset data in the business.
“The real-time system means we can really plan out where our guys are going on a daily basis and save time,” he said.
“It’s allowed us to be a lot quicker in assigning and tracking work, and has saved resources.”
“Maximo is one of the top-rated asset management systems – it’s the bee’s knees when it comes to this.”