How Gladstone Area Water Board transformed their water management efficiency

Overview

The Gladstone Area Water Board (GAWB) is a Queensland government-owned statutory authority responsible for the supply of raw and potable water. GAWB operates and maintains a network of infrastructure, including dams, pipelines, and treatment plants, to ensure reliable water services to industrial, commercial, and residential customers in the Gladstone region. Their commitment to sustainable water management supports the region’s economic growth and environmental health.

An audit of GAWB’s Engineering Document Management System (EDMS) found that works were being performed with outdated information. Additionally, asset data and drawings were difficult to find.

Key Takeaways

• Using up-to-date engineering drawings can generate substantial time and cost savings on upgrade projects by eliminating re-drafting.
• Creating a single source of truth of asset data and drawings ensures field teams and contractors can work smarter and more safely.
• Digital transformation does not necessarily have to eliminate head count but can improve productivity of existing experts within an organization.

Accruent has provided support and advice above expectations."

-Tina Underwood, Technical Officer, GIS, Gladstone Area Water Board

Challenges

The Gladstone Area Water Board (GAWB) was established in 1973 as a Project Board under State and Regional Planning and Development, Public Works Organization and Environmental Control Act 1971-73.

GAWB’s purpose is to meet the water needs of its current and future customers in Central Queensland’s Gladstone region, in environmentally, socially and commercially sustainable ways.

As well as owning and operating the Awoonga Dam and a recreational fishery on the Boyne River, GAWB manages a network of delivery pipelines, water treatment plants and other bulk water distribution infrastructure.

An audit of GAWB’s Document Management System revealed that works were being performed with outdated information. GAWB’s teams also reported that asset data and drawings were difficult to find. This raised a number of issues and risks pertaining to project delays, general inefficiencies, contractual litigation, and even safety.

GAWB sought a new EDMS solution that would help the organization work smarter, reduce risk, and save money.

Solution

GAWB’s new ecosystem, which included RedEye and other applications such as Microsoft365 and GIS, went live in July 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It connected users in many functional areas across the organization, while also supporting more than 37 contractors to access critical asset drawings and data.

One of the key mandates of the upgrade project was not to replace practices and people, but rather to enhance existing practices with technology, freeing up staff to do higher value work.

The project vision was to improve services through a collaboration environment to better support the network operators and projects teams to make their job easier by providing access to information without limitations.

The project also sought to add employee value to the business, customers, and industry through training and upskilling with current technology skill sets and to draw maximum value from the assets.

Moving to remote delivery mid-implementation project due to COVID-19, Accruent maintained support and advice above expectations, ensuring delivery was on schedule. Accruent always communicates in a timely manner and is available, which helps us minimize concerns and risks with the shift of delivery method."

-Tina Underwood, Technical Officer, GIS, Gladstone Area Water Board

The Benefits

Using RedEye, GAWB was able to reduce duplicate documents by 100%. The new system immediately enabled faster document upload times, delivered a simple search function to find information faster, allowed users to manage redline markups, and introduced a version control function.

Along with the launch, came new policies and business processes. GAWB’s policy now is to manage all drawings and PDF plots related to their capital project delivery and operations and maintenance in RedEye. This has created a single source of truth for all asset-related drawings and information.

Internally, GAWB’s project management team are some of the most active users of RedEye as they control the approvals of as-constructed drawings submitted by their contractors. This process creates accurate baseline data about the assets out in the field.

It also ensures the increased safety of field teams, by providing them access to the most current drawings.

Accruent’s RedEye has provided a single source of truth for engineering data and drawings, inviting users into a common data environment to view, markup, and share data replacing repetitive manual tasks saving time and freeing up resources.

The technology platform has enabled the business to enhance its processes making it easy to control process, track and audit, change control and to improve stakeholder engagement both internally and externally providing new business opportunities.

GAWB’s Engineering team noted the importance of maintaining drawings accurately throughout the lifecycle of the asset - and the cost of not doing so.

They reported how in the past, having inaccurate drawings could add significant costs to future projects by having to field verify undocumented modifications. RedEye has helped solve this challenge.

When it comes time for upgrades or necessary changes, reusing the past designs of project drawings now also creates cost savings for GAWB. By not having to re-create drawings, the project team does not incur the cost of field verifications, re-drawing and engineering time.

By making asset data and engineering drawings accessible anywhere, any time, RedEye assists water utility providers like GAWB to ultimately reduce risk, error and miscommunication, improving safety and compliance.

Without systems like RedEye, GAWB could not live up to its Vision, Mission and Values to safely and effectively operate and maintain infrastructure to deliver “Quality Water”. It is without doubt that the benefits to the business, has a positive rippling effect on the wider organization, and the community.

-Tina Underwood, Technical Officer, GIS, Gladstone Area Water Board