A regional Council in the North Island of New Zealand, serving a diverse population, and managing a range of assets in a variety of environments from sea to summit.
Asset management processes needed to be reinvented to move on from legacy systems, whilst taking the opportunity to improve and streamline service delivery. The range of asset sizes and lifetimes varied hugely (from street cabinets to river stop-banks), as did the processes and management surrounding them.
As part of this work, as-is and to-be processes had to be explored, documented and validated across organisational functions through cross-functional team workshops. This work allowed the overall programme delivery team to create a prioritised, phased approach with the selected vendor.
This would be used by the new solution provider to scope, price and plan their implementation work.
A working group of subject matter experts (SMEs) was convened and supported to draw up a catalogue of processes and users, over the course of a couple of months.
They were supported through a programme of workshops to explore, area-by-area, how the organisation served its community and met its operational and business objectives.
To promote the level of conversation we needed, this was very hands-on work, getting people ‘in the room’ with printouts, sticky notes and (sometimes robust) conversations. Trust building and active listening was important for unlocking institutional knowledge quickly and completely, testing proposed processes 'on paper' to spot issues early.
A huge amount of detailed information was rapidly and successfully shared across the cohort in the working group.
It was gathered and distilled into future process designs, business requirements, and a potential roadmap for implementation, along with possible risks to delivery success.
This informed programme and investment decision-makers. In turn this crystalised the conversations and decisions the organisation needed to make to choose their ultimate route forward – upgrade or change provider.
