The City of Greater Geelong is the largest regional city outside of Melbourne, with a population of approximately 275,000 people. What distinguishes Geelong from most Melbourne local government areas is that along with the urbanised area comprising Geelong, the Greater City covers several large satellite communities. These include Lara, Ocean Grove, Leopold, and Drysdale, as well as semi-rural areas including most of the Bellarine Peninsula.
The City of Greater Geelong approached Regional Project Consulting in 2020, in the midst of the COVID 19 crisis for condition data across most of its asset categories. This was required as part of an initiative by the State Government called Working for Victoria (WFV) to get Victorians back to work who may have lost their jobs during the enforced lockdowns. While the City had accurate data across roads and bridges, footpath data was outdated, and condition data for all other asset categories were virtually non-existent.
While the Working for Victoria initiative provided the opportunity for labour to capture the asset condition data that the City needed, it did not include the know-how and experience to establish data collection methodologies. The City could not deliver a training program to WFV staff, nor could it audit and manage the project throughout its completion. Regional Project Consulting was engaged for exactly this purpose and stepped up to the challenge.
Adapting to the challenges of the day
Through the WFV program, the City successfully onboarded 33 staff to participate in condition assessments across open space, footpaths, roadside furniture, and arts & culture assets. The City also temporarily redeployed a dozen public facing employees who were unable to complete their ordinary roles during lockdowns. As such, these staff came from diverse backgrounds including hospitality workers, retail workers, recent graduates, a librarian and a Qantas pilot.
Not detracting from their other skills and experience, the group had no training in infrastructure inspections. At this stage in the project development, no methodologies or training packages had been developed for each asset category. Data dictionaries had yet to be agreed upon with respective asset owners, and there was a myriad of existing data that had been collected previously using different criteria.
Starting with footpaths, Regional Project Consulting finalised a data dictionary and agreed upon a custom methodology. From there, we established a training manual and package and WFV staff were able to commence inspection and data collection on footpaths.
Meanwhile, we commenced work on developing a data dictionary and training package for the roadside furniture asset category. This category is slightly more complex, as a number of different asset types are involved. However, working with the same process, we were able to develop the necessary methodologies to commence work on roadside furniture.
“I can’t emphasise enough how important it was to establish methodologies for each asset category from the outset.” – Jeremy Rudd, RPC Director leading this project.
As this work was undertaken in October and November 2020, Regional Project Consulting was forced to use online training methods at the beginning of this project. As the project continued, it was possible to begin delivering face-to-face interactions. The importance of training for the successful completion of this project cannot be understated, and training manuals were developed and made available electronically for inspectors to self-reference.
We set a goal to physically audit 2.5% of the data collected, an extraordinary goal considering the vast quantities of data being collected. This was one of the most important decisions made throughout the project. The audits set about checking each individual inspector to ensure consistency. The regular audits meant that any bad habits at the beginning of the project could be quashed quickly and rectified.
Regional Project Consulting assigned selected analysts to the analysis of data and the reporting process. Their job was imperative to the success of the project, providing deeper insights into anomalies that we were then able to rectify.
“They were literally my eyes on the data and became extremely efficient at finding anomalies and rectifying themselves.” – Jeremy Rudd
Streamlining success
The project was an overwhelming success, giving the City of Greater Geelong comprehensive, up to date condition data across all footpaths, roadside furniture, open space, and art & culture assets. The methodology created by Regional Project Consulting is now available and repeatable, allowing the City to compare condition data across time in a consistent way. This enables the City to establish accurate degradation curves to apply to their assets, and a streamlined process to use in the future.
We have identified the following elements as the defining factors of success for this project. Succeeding in these things will lead to desired outcomes for your condition assessment project, too.
- Develop a methodology that suits your needs – the core purpose of the methodology should be to make the assessment repeatable and reliable into the future.
- Provide training to all inspectors. Don’t expect them to understand the difference between a Category 1 and a Category 5 condition rating, or to know the difference between a sign post and a lighting pole for that matter. Cover all bases in training.
- Auditing is essential. Though this sounds like common sense, auditing is rarely done across local government condition assessments. A significant number of data points should be audited from the moment assessment begins so that corrective action can be taken before it’s too late.
- Supervision of inspection staff is extremely important. The supervisor should be competent and experienced to oversee the assessment project, and someone who thoroughly understands the chosen methodology. This person can double up as the trainer if there are not adequate resources for both roles to be separate. Supervision pays for itself in productivity.
- It is imperative to set KPIs and measure them. Set a minimum length or number of assets expected and a quality level of at least 90%.
“When we commenced the project, I was fielding multiple questions from inspectors and analysts every hour. However, by completion, I’m proud to say I was almost redundant and the team was self sufficient”.
