Project: Asset Management and GIS

Goondiwindi Regional Council has been subscribing to SHEPHERD’s Asset Management Bureau Services since 2017.  With access to SHEPHERD’s team of specialists with skills in asset management, road condition assessment, valuations and GIS, Council has significantly progressed its level of Asset Management maturity.

The partnership has developed a positive and professional asset management culture within Council as well as proactive collaboration between finance and engineering departments that achieves measurable results.

Working with council striving to achieve best practice asset management in order to deliver the best value services to their local communities is what drives us at SHEPHERD. With an Asset Management Strategic Plan and Policy now in place, Goondiwindi Regional Council is well on their way to achieving a financially sustainable future for their region.

The following testimonial is provided by Goondiwindi Regional Council’s Manager Finance Bradley:

Our Council is a rural remote one and has difficulty attracting specialist services. For this reason we have engaged and partnered with SHEPHERD in a Bureau Service arrangement for near approaching three years now. This has been an extremely positive experience both for Councillors, Finance and Engineering professionals within Council.

SHEPHERD’s high standard of excellence to any project and level of service to the client is unmatched. In my thirty plus years of working with and for engineers, I have not yet had the pleasure of working with a more creative and energetic team. SHEPHERD is absolutely the best in the business.

In July 2019, South Burnett Regional Council engaged SHEPHERD to review and update its Water and Wastewater Asset Registers and GIS as Stage 1 of Council’s Water and Wastewater Regional Strategic Planning Project funded under the Maturing the Infrastructure Pipeline Project 2 (MIPP2).

Our Project Team was lead by SHEPHERD Senior Asset Engineer and RPEQ Chris Egbars and consisted of SHEPHERD Partner and RPEQ Stephen Hegedus, Senior Asset Engineer Nabin Shrestha, Asset Management and GIS Specialist Craig Smit and Consultant Engineer Ian Clarke.

The Challenge

Reconstruct asset registers in new Tech 1 hierarchy format using available information including incomplete Tech 1 registers, as constructed plans, existing GIS, staff knowledge and outputs from field inspections of above ground facilities.  Also, capture condition ratings and operational status of assets at these facilities.

Challenges included many facility inspection sites spread throughout ten (10) towns, ongoing asset hierarchy and asset description refinements, and identifying below ground assets at facilities.

Our Solution

Complete field inspections of approximately 5,100 water and sewerage assets comprising bores, pumps stations, reservoirs and treatment plants at ten (10) towns and communities – Blackbutt, Boondoomba Dam, Kingaroy, Kumbia, Murgon, Nanango, Proston, Wooroolin and Yallakool.

Update asset registers with 51,000 inground pipework assets and 5,100 above ground assets with descriptions and in new Tech 1 hierarchy format.

Fortnightly progress reporting and onsite meetings with client to plan the forward work including inspections, address needs as they arose for development of registers and hierarchy according to new Tech 1 format.

SHEPHERD outputs were reviewed by Council’s technical staff and recommended changes/revisions were undertaken accordingly.

Key Outcomes

The project was successfully completed in January 2020 and achieved the following outcomes for Council:

• Updated water and sewerage asset registers with latest asset condition ratings for above ground assets;
• Useful inputs including remaining useful lives of assets for accurate comprehensive valuations to follow;
• Registers identify electrical and mechanical assets for consideration for inspection and maintenance programming; and
• Necessary inputs to water and sewer main modelling for determining upgrades and thus infrastructure charging.