“AMPEAK Insights: Proactive Asset Management in the Digital Age” offers a deep dive into three pivotal presentations from AMPEAK 2023. This session illuminates the challenges and solutions surrounding “Infant Mortality” in assets across industries, emphasizing its unforeseen occurrences and mitigation strategies. It further delves into the transformative journey of Water Corporation’s shift from traditional data handling to the innovative Operations Intelligence (OI) framework, underscoring the power of data-driven decision-making in asset management. Lastly, the event showcases Silver Edge Technologies’ ground-breaking approach in devising a 10-year renewals program for urban rail, highlighting the synergy between analytical data and engineering expertise. Together, these presentations encapsulate the essence of modern, proactive asset management strategies in our increasingly digital world.

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About the presentations and speakers:

Infant Mortality – Case Studies with Practical Solutions

Infant Mortality can (and does) occur in all industries. Early failure of assets is generally known as Infant Mortality. These early failures can occur on newly commissioned assets or recently refurbished or maintained assets. These failures can cause delays to projects, resulting in significant lost revenue, as well as exposure to safety risks.

This presentation will explain in detail the theory of Infant Mortality and use a number of case studies to illustrate examples of Infant Mortality during different phases of the life cycle. While most asset managers are familiar with Infant Mortality during the early life or commissioning phase, this paper will focus on the occurrence of Infant Mortality during the operate and maintain phase of the life cycle. In each case study, potential mitigation will be outlined, demonstrating how the failure and the resulting consequences could have been avoided or at least minimised.

At the end of this presentation, the audience will have a better understanding of Infant Mortality and the consequences of not anticipating its occurrence. The presentation will also provide some practical measures to prevent or mitigate the occurrence of Infant Mortality.

Mark Mackenzie, Principal Advisor, One North

Mark is a highly qualified and experienced engineer with over thirty five years’ experience in maintenance, reliability, and asset management. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Engineer and a Certified Fellow of Asset Management who is also a Fellow of Engineers Australia and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia. Mark has worked extensively in Australia and overseas in a variety of roles and industries. He has worked in multinational companies, as well as specialist consulting companies where his technical and leadership advice is keenly sought and received. He is an experienced facilitator and a sought – after speaker who regularly presents technical papers and tutorials at national and international conferences. He also delivers university lectures to undergraduates and post graduates and provides training on behalf of the Asset Management Council of Australia.

Operations Intelligence – Improving Asset Management through effective use of data

Water Corporation is a large, complex organisation with around 4,000 people. We service over 17,000KM of sewer mains, supply almost 400 billion litres of water, and operate a vast number of treatment processes state-wide.

To achieve these feats efficiently and safely, we need high-quality data about our assets and the confidence to use this data in decision-making. Ideally, our data should drive process improvements, leading to superior product quality with reduced labour, chemicals, energy, and capital expenditure. For this to happen, the right information must be presented to the appropriate audience in an understandable format and at the correct cadence.

In the past, our approach relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets. While these were relatively user-friendly, they had limited capabilities. They were time-consuming, error-prone, and challenging to scale. Extracting insights was entirely manual, as was the integration of multiple data streams.

Our solution was to develop a PI Asset Framework database, which we named Operations Intelligence (OI).

The primary objectives in developing OI were to make operational data meaningful and accessible to the entire business. We also aimed to create opportunities for faster decision-making as close to the operational front as possible. The technical nature of the framework allows us to identify the elements of a process, specify relationships within that process, and organise these in a manner that’s easy to understand. Moreover, it’s been designed to work across all our projects and teams. This means we can standardise all data streams into one framework. By establishing a single source of truth, we’ve ensured that all operational and asset decisions are made using aligned data.

OI has rapidly enhanced our data maturity, setting us on the path to becoming a data-driven business where accurate and effective information underpins all decisions.

Bradley Shand, Senior Technical Advisor – Advanced Operational Solutions, Water Corporation

Bradley Shand works for the Water Corporation as a Senior Technical Advisor in Advanced Operational Solutions. Since starting his career eight years ago as a process engineer in wastewater treatment he has since expanded to work across the full spectrum of water assets. In recent years Bradley has specialised on the enhancement and use of operational data and converting it to functional information. He has long been an advocate for improved asset and process management through effective use of data and information. This is in pursuit of improving operational and investment sustainability of being able to do more with less.

Devising Long Term Asset Renewal Plans with Health Indicators

Public infrastructure asset owners grapple with a costly trade-off: limiting the risk of asset failure while meeting service level requirements. It’s essential to consider all available risk indicators. This consideration ensures a balance between implementing a proactive strategy for enhanced decision-making and reacting to asset failures. A significant challenge is crafting a combination of analytical and engineering solutions that consolidate available asset, condition, and operational data for better maintenance and operational decision-making.

Silver Edge Technologies was engaged to devise an optimised 10-year renewals programme for an urban rail operator. Our approach centred on analysing data from various sources, constructing a linear model of the network, and aligning asset condition data with this model. Drawing from our extensive experience in the practical application of asset management, we collaboratively developed track health indices. These were visualised alongside condition data on an interactive dashboard, facilitating a prioritised 10-year renewal plan. This dashboard offers insights for engineering examinations and in-depth exploration of condition data from neighbouring locations.

Our engineers conducted field inspections of critical assets and sites to further validate the insights from the dashboard. Data from these inspections, combined with dashboard information, was utilised to pinpoint and prioritise locations for upcoming maintenance. Major periodic maintenance was planned and outlined at these sites, capitalising on our expertise in maintenance execution.

Our approach enhanced understanding of asset performance and condition, leading to heightened confidence in maintenance budgeting and resource allocation. This understanding ensures fact-based planning and increased efficiency in long-term maintenance due to the standardisation of planned renewal works. We realised efficiency gains via automatic data ingestion into a dashboard that incorporates intricate asset health calculations and prioritisation indices. Importantly, we found that synergies between analytical and engineering resources can be nurtured in asset management, especially in situations where data silos or complexity might otherwise obstruct engineering assessments and maintenance planning.

Jozef Raijmakers, Asset Management Lead, Silver Edge

Jozef has 12 years of experience in Asset Management and is a specialist in Rail Technology with proven ability to analyse complex business processes, initiate improvements, and implement solutions. Jozef has recently delivered a 10-year rail maintenance and renewal plan for the public transport owner’s major periodic maintenance project. Previously in the Netherlands, he worked on the ProRail performance-based maintenance contracts, where he was responsible for the implementation of work management processes and maintenance contracts, and initiating optimisations for maintenance activities based on analytics of remote condition monitoring technology. Other recent technology projects include coordinating the commissioning and operational readiness of track-recording vehicles and working with Australian heavy haul operators creating the strategy, processes, and operational readiness plan for a fault management Control Centre for rail networks. He also developed a comprehensive Digital Asset Management Information Strategy and implementation roadmap of projects. This digital strategy includes introducing and implementing new technologies such as Remote Condition Monitoring and Digital Twins.

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