defining Public Infrastructure Maintenance
What does SAAS mean to you and your organisation?
Much discussion is currently being had in regard to SAAS in particular Confirm as a service, topics such as hosting, on demand, but what is your definition? We would like to understand what you think it is, how you see it impacting your organisation and whether you are planning your future service delivery through SAAS.
Answers on a postcard, please. Richard
With the recent Street Lighting conference focusing on self monitoring and remotely controlled lighting followed by the publication on 10 August by the Gartner report titled “The Value of IT and OT Integration” are we starting to see the emergence of a new cashable efficiency area?
Large scale Government procurements of IT systems in our space are starting to “float” the idea of self monitoring assets (e.g. in tunnels and property) to reduce the overall cost of maintenance.
OT systems refer to “Operational Technology” systems, meaning “systems” that run assets or the service delivery process that it the purpose of the asset. They can work in either direction – turning down or up the street lighting at various times of the day or sending warnings when an asset is about to fail. OT systems often include software linked to sensors. The outputs can often point to web pages that in turn make data available to IT systems but most often produce outputs that are proprietary. Caution might be an idea if you are in the market anytime soon.
Integration between OT and IT systems not requiring operator presence might be the “ideal”, but there are at least two critical questions:
1. What process or processes is/are triggered by what output(s) from the sensor
2. Can the OT and IT systems be integrated and how robust are they (the definition of robust might be: quick to implement; low cost to implement; break hardly ever and reliable)
Depending on the OT system, outputs might vary from “Inspect me, I might be failing” to “Get someone out here to fix or replace me, right now”. An amusing thought, perhaps, but think of closing a tunnel just to inspect the lights…in a busy city…and it suddenly starts to sound quite the cost saving point of view. Think about a very high street lamp column on a busy roundabout where traffic flows are busy 20 hours a day…making more sense yet?
Where our Confirm system sits in this equation will evolve. The first integration of IT and OT happened around 1997 with a Confirm in CyberJaya (Malaysia) and a series of building Self Monitoring sensors (lifts, lighting circuits and the like). What happens in future, will we find out together? Will it be led by a few projects? Will legislation lead the way – reducing Carbon Footprint in the Street Lighting department is an obvious one, but what if a new report shows how a new breed of self monitoring assets can enable Inspectors to be re-purposed to operational staff?
It would be great to hear some stories of how your IT and OT systems integrate…or not. Please email me or post a comment. If there are common threads, maybe the Confirm users will lead the way…stranger things have happened (Confirm was the first product of our type in the field with hand held computers in 1994 and currently have over 3,040 Confirm mobile modules working every day, “out there”).
What’s your view, what’s your story?
I was intrigued listening to “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” for the umpteenth time, hea
ring the version of ROI cited as Return Of (or On) investment … to quote the audio book. I like the version of ROI using “Of”. So, how might buying Confirm mobile return your investment back to you? I will offer some ideas and would welcome you then sending me some ideas of your own. Good ones, I will share through this Blog in case they might be the odd useful one or two.
There are many ways to find out what the six Confirm mobile modules do, and what the three technologies do (GPS, Wireless upload and maps). But how can you think about making the case internally?
Having spent a while working in Management Services at a London Borough, albeit a thousand years ago, I am quite familiar with the need to “make the case”. It is getting harder and harder and I offer some ideas that may, or may not, be helpful to some of you.
How about thinking whether any of these ideas are releavnt to your “case”:
1. (The all to obvious)…Using Mobile working, worker spend x hours in the field rather than y hours per day. This equates directly to a z% increase in productivity or frees up resource for re-allocation elsewhere. Perhaps x=7, y=4 and z=75; in such a case a £30k investment with a 6 person team will pay itself back in 12 months maximum but you can do the maths your own way.
2. The time between discovering a fault/defect and remedial action commencing by the contractor is reduced from 1+ days to 60 minutes (for a well configured system for category 1 defects/emergency faults). This equates to (after investigation) an estimated 20 less complaints per month AND 30 less citizen chase up contatcts per month, which will itself pay us back by using 0.5 less people processing enquiries and thus pay back a £30k investment in 2 years….again, do the maths your way.
3. What ideas do you have for calculating mobile woring savings – please email me dominic.mcneillis@pb.comaws it has been a while since I had to write a real report – in fact, a way back into the last millenium!
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