Simplify infrastructure auditing at scale

As has been known by administrators in local government throughout Australia (and much of the world) for time immemorial, council asset management systems are often cumbersome, time consuming to use and generally inefficient. In fact, a recent report from the current Victoria, Australia, Auditor-General stressed the need for local governments to improve asset management, or risk increased management costs and lower service levels. In the most recent state-wide audit, it was found that 24 councils had not recorded $315 million worth of assets. This 'discrepancy' is due to the difficulty of managing asset networks at scale.

The Auditor-General's report highlighted persistent weaknesses in council asset management practices and stressed the need for councils to improve their asset management frameworks and practices. Added to this, current talk from the New South Wales, Australia, Audit Office is around the need for data integrity in the valuing of assets and on how this will be an area for scrutiny in this year's audit.

Asseti is in a uniquely advantageous position to assist. In fact, helping councils – and asset network operators of all types – solve their asset and infrastructure management problems is exactly what Asseti does.

Cloud technology is the heart of Asseti's asset management optimization, across the platform's data, processing, platform and analytics engines. A cloud native solution, Asseti is architected for agile flexibility to meet subscriber's requirements. The asset management world was purposefully made center during development, by embedding asset performance consultants within the technology teams. This architected flexibility does not impact the platform's security, which is similar to that used in banking. Ongoing optimizations were enacted to deliver a platform to answer asset management needs at scale, and since general availability the teams collaborate with clients. This close liaison provides an understanding of challenges and goals, so that Asseti can build additional features and functionality to meet compliance, reporting and other asset management requirements.

Because of this focus on agility, the speed in which Asseti provides return on investment is significant. Using Asseti, one Council subscriber has modelled a reduction in their capital expenditure budget and planning process from approximately four weeks to a mere two days, thereby allowing resources and productivity to be expended in areas of more direct benefit to the community.

Asseti Dashboards

Inside Asseti, dashboards are used to show required combinations of detail, such as asset condition, required MRO (maintenance and repair operations), and the risk level of required MRO. Dashboards are configured to the user's purview – from one asset such as a building, to aggregating an entire asset network such as a council's building, park and road furniture infrastructure.

Preconfigured dashboards, aligned to industry norms and best practice, are included in Asseti. Users can also configure their own custom dashboards, with different numbers of custom dashboards available with different subscription levels. Users configure custom dashboards to reflect the information they require to expedite their oversight and planning operations, and instantaneously sight the detail most meaningful to making faster and better decisions in their area of responsibility. Dashboards are designed with all necessary status and risk detail so that critical information is always immediately available.

Optimization is the name of the game, and Asseti has developed and honed the product to make oversight and auditing of council asset networks very easy, and very fast. The cloud-based technology adds to their existing systems to make them more useful and agile.

Reporting can be transitioned from a cumbersome quarterly or biannual exercise with heavy administrative demands to a tool for consistent management, using immediately up to date data. The search for retrospective data is abolished, with all information either current or multilayered to build an insightful genomic view of the asset and network. In this way Asseti either simplifies or eliminates end of period reporting, such as end of financial year and end of quarter reports. Asseti transforms the capability of councils and other network operators to easily manage and report assets networks at scale.

Asseti and its dashboard functionality answer the requirements called out by the Victorian Auditor-General's report for councils to improve asset management (and find the 'lost' $315 million worth of assets) and assist any NSW councils concerned with scrutiny from the Audit Office.

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