Melbourne Water is midway through a multi-year journey to equip its field workforce with mobile technologies to boost operational efficiency. It detailed progress to date and plans for the future at the recent Field Service Management conference in Sydney.
Presenters John Woodland, mobile computing project sponsor and manager, water supply, and Frank Courtney, mobile computing project business representative and technology improvement specialist, set out the drivers of the project and the goals for the project. These will be all too familiar to anyone in a similar organisation.
Melbourne Water, owned by the Victorian Government, manages Melbourne’s water supply catchments, treats and supplies drinking and recycled water, removes and treats most of Melbourne’s sewage and manages waterways and major drainage systems in the Port Phillip and Westernport region.
Its multimillion dollar assets are diverse, widely distributed and, in many cases, critical. To manage these, it relies on a mobile workforce of small, autonomous teams each assigned to a specific region. Their ability to access information and to feed back information are crucial to sound business decision-making, efficient operation and travel minimisation.
Melbourne Water started its mobilisation journey back in 2009 with a business process review and the deployment of multiple device types - PDA, notebook, tablet, laptop - to ascertain suitability. It has now standardised on the ruggedised Windows-based Motion Computing F5v tablet. It uses pen or touch-based input, comes with 3G, GPS and WiFi capability and is rated Intrusion Protection (IP5) which makes it dust and spray resistant.
To date applications are largely online forms completion and submission (power users have the ability to create and manage forms). Down the track Melbourne Water plans to develop “a field ready solution that is relevant, easy to use and part of the everyday ‘Toolkit’.”
It is developing its next generation of field data collection tools to incorporate more business rules and referential data within e-forms and is leveraging mobility to support greater optimisation initiatives. Functionality will be extended to tighten integration with corporate systems: electronic permit to work, asset management information systems, operations data store and SCADA systems. Melbourne Water also plans to extend corporate unified communications services such as video conferencing and collaboration tools to its tablets.
Woodland and Courtney said a key to the success of the project had been the engagement of field teams and management at every stage of the project. Input and approval were sought from the Business at design, scope and procurement stages. Business and IT stakeholders are equally represented in the project governance group, and the project is ‘business driven’, i.e. it is not considered a corporate IT project.
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