Water vs wi-fi: Who will be utilities CIO of the year?

Chris Truscott - Melbourne Water

    Asset management information system replacement

Melbourne Water’s $20 million replacement of its core asset management system not only released the agency from the shackles of out of date technology.

The project was also a “once in a 15 year opportunity” to enhance the way it manages $18 billion worth of water infrastructure.

Melbourne Water seized the opportunity to modernise not only technology but bundle up an overhaul of business processes into the change process, and to make the way 460 workers do their jobs easier and more efficient.

The replacement is expected to deliver Melbourne Water significant savings over the life of the new technology by optimising the life expectancy of its assets and enabling it to make better strategic decisions about when and where to send maintenance teams.

Neil Louis - Telstra

Telstra Air

In a post-NBN world the telecommunications playing field will be levelled and telcos will have to find new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors.

In response, Telstra is building what it claims will the Australia’s largest wi-fi network, leveraging legacy infrastructure like payphones as well as home broadband customers' own connections to reach its target of 2 million hotspots by 2020.

The network allows Telstra home broadband customers to share a portion of their data allowance in return for the same from others.

The $100 million program represents an ambitious customer value proposition that has yet to be matched by any other players in the market. The telco reports that take-up is already exceeding initial expectations, and the ultimate success of the project will be Telstra's ability to convince customers to share their data.

Nina Du Thaler - Queensland Urban Utilities

Q-Hubs

Queensland Urban Utilities has created the Q-Hubs portal to visualise geospatial data drawn out of many different systems, giving staff a holistic picture of the water authority’s operations at any given moment.

Q-Hubs delivers layer-by-layer visual details on where maintenance vehicles are located, where work orders are being carried out, where there are planned network shut-offs and where incidents have been reported.

The platform goes beyond static ‘snapshots’ of geospatial data collated from disparate systems. The Q-Hubs system draws and visualises information in real time to give workers immediate operational intelligence to deploy staff and manage the sewer network.

It also provides staff single-view access to customer records and network status. The platform is driving added revenue from the ability to better spot business users not paying their dues in any specific area.