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Contents 
Introduction
Benefits and implications
The push to centralise
Australian ITIL
AAD sheds light on frozen assets
Executive summary |
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All these systems, both high-tech and low, rely on continual maintenance and attention to remain working. In the past, this attention was managed using a variety of paper records and spreadsheets that took a huge amount of effort and time to maintain. Just how much effort and time they required, however, wasn't clear until the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), which administers the stations, implemented MRO Software's MAXIMO asset management system early last year.
AAD used MAXIMO to build a register of the site's fixed assets, which range from pumps and valves to heaters and chairs and a complex system for producing potable water. Each has its own lifecycle requirements to be managed, including repair schedules and spare parts inventories. All of this information is now contained within MAXIMO and provided to employees through a simplified Web-based interface.
Introducing an automated system gave AAD a corporate memory that was impossible to create due to a rostering schedule in which all staff are replaced every 12 months. For this reason, ease-of-use was critical to ensure that workers learned and wanted to use the system rather than simply ignoring a mandate from AAD headquarters in Tasmania, thousands of kilometres away.
"We've tried to keep our asset base as high level as we could, so we avoid raising jobs on individual, smaller assets," says Jason Watson, MAXIMO project engineer with the AAD, from his position at frigid Casey Station.
"We have to keep it simple so that plumbers, carpenters, mechanics and others coming from varying degrees of IT literacy can learn it from day one. They're starting to get behind it, and it's saving an awful lot of work when we have to go back and produce reports."
An automated asset management system has also revealed a surprising fact -- workers at the bases spend around 40 percent of their time simply keeping the station functioning. By better managing the sites' installed assets, this proportion should be reduced over time, giving workers more time to handle other types of tasks.
One such task is planning for a relatively major IT upgrade, which will be implemented after a dozen e-mail, file sharing and voice over IP servers are delivered during the AAD's annual resupply trip this summer. With a robust asset management environment in place, each piece of IT equipment will join more conventional P&E assets so they can all be managed through a unified interface.
Collection of IT-related asset information will support the creation of a formal helpdesk system in the future, supporting both internal equipment and personal PCs that arrive at the stations where staff can log requests and we can manage them. The system will also allow tracking of support information regarding employees' individual PCs, many of which are brought with them when they arrive. "Because we've got a rather long lead time for getting data, it's quite important to know what's available and where it is," says Watson. "We're looking to get financial payback through rightsizing and making sure we get what we need -- but not too much of it."
