Our Approach

In order for us to deliver comprehensive, holistic solutions to each one of our clients, we apply a systematic approach to our asset management lifecycle, namely Plan, Build, Operate and Assess.

PLAN

The desired outcome of Planning is to prioritise (inform appropriate budget and strategies) and schedule capital work within the allocated budget allowance. This can only be achieved by integrating all asset related systems with core enterprise applications resulting in greater control over, and visibility into operations, resulting in up-to-date data on asset performance.

Planning is not a one off event but rather an ongoing process of understanding demand, designing for a future state while, in parallel, assessing the current network’s condition and need to upgrade or renew assets. Specialist engineering services and solution are required for the design, modelling and prioritisation of activities.

MASTER PLANNING

Future demand planning by using expert analysis systems to determine the capacity requirements.

REPLACE / UPGRADE PRIORITISATION

Risk analysis based multiple criteria to determine the likelihood and impact of failure.

FAILURE ANALYSIS

Asset failure ratings (eg. pipe bursts / blockages, pump failures, failure types, etc.) measured against service level agreements and manufacturing specification.

SERVICE NEEDS

Municipalities gain insight to the communities’ needs on different levels, through different mechanisms. The key mechanism is the Integrated Development Plan and considered the municipality’s core management tool. It aims to maintain a balance between the community needs and sector plans.

PROJECT PRIORITY

The outputs from the various capabilities under the PLAN heading produce a prioritised list of projects. These priorities need to be consolidated and analysed to determine the highest priority items measured against the available budget.

BUILD

Projects can fail due to ineffective project control caused by inadequate and disparate retention of and access to critical project data. A thorough understanding of the capital projects life cycle together with the comprehensive IMQS Project Control System addresses this problem through two primary enablers:

Allow dynamic tracking and management of capital and operational projects

in line with the life cycle asset management requirements.

Establish auditability, transparency and project controls through technology.

Utilising a project control system enables our clients to effectively and pro-actively manage and monitor capital projects in terms of physical as well as financial progress, supported by comprehensive strategic reporting. It further supports and promotes best practise business principles, effective capital project management disciplines and the achievement of the following objectives:

OPERATE

The enablement of holistic asset operations and Maintenance Management is achieved through integrating, automating, and unifying of all maintenance-related data sources, processes, and reporting. The system also provides early warning signs of asset failure and potential material shortages based on available stock-levels.

This insight, coupled with investment forecasting strategies, needs to be integrated into the asset planning phase and will insure organizational readiness from an asset management viewpoint.

INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

Incidents that happen against an asset may result in a work instruction for an operational team to react on the request and fix the asset.

TELEMETRY / RT DATA FEEDS

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

Incidents are grouped and prioritised to create work instructions in the Workforce Management module. Work instructions get generated in the workforce management module and scheduled to the appropriate work team.

ASSESS

The final step in life cycle asset management is the ongoing verification of assets or Management of asset data. In order to achieve the optimal life cycle management of assets, our clients are required, on a regular basis, to review the current status of its assets portfolios in order to assess whether it meets the minimum affordable levels of service standards and in assessing the future demands by using methods such as physical verification, and failure mode exercises.

To this extent an asset management information system should include grading scales for the following life cycle measurements in order to capture and record critical decision making information in the asset portfolio:

CONDITION

It is a key parameter in determining remaining useful life, and can be used to predict how long it will be before an asset needs to be repaired, upgraded, renewed or replaced. It is also an indicator of how well an asset is able to perform its function.

CRITICALITY

This measures how critical an asset is to the functioning of and/or the services provided by DWS. The importance or degree of asset criticality is based on the consequences of failure.

PERFORMANCE

The performance of an asset is its ability to deliver a target level of service. Asset performance can be measured by using surveys calibrated against documented affordable levels of standards.

UTILISATION

This is the extent to which an asset is being productively used by DWS. It is typically measured as a percentage of its capacity and graded accordingly.

COST OF OPERATIONS

This is the expenditure associated in the act of utilising an asset. Asset operation will typically consume materials, labour and energy and the cost associated with these are measured and compared to industry standards per asset component.

RISK

Risk is a product of criticality and probability of failure.

Each of these grading scales provides invaluable information in order to forecast future levels of service and demand needs, analysing the gap between the current capability of the assets and that needed to meet future demands, and to developing a programme to close that gap. However this information needs to be captured or updated annually.