Goulburn-Murray Water is using a real-time monitoring system to find efficiencies and savings

The recently-installed system, which includes four television screens showing live data, provides GMW’s field services team with the status of current maintenance activities across the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District. The GMID covers an area of approximately 35,000sqkm.

GMW works scheduler and planning coordinator Peter Watkins said the system helped create efficiencies, including reducing the costs of labour and materials.

“As a visual tool, it really helps us to effectively plan our maintenance and that’s always going to be a benefit for our customers,” Mr Watkins said.

“We’re also looking at different data sets we can bring in, which will help us drill down even further and look at more effective ways to plan out our maintenance.”

Every day, GMW’s maintenance planners prioritised reactive works, such as channel leaks or works on modernised irrigation assets and mapped out the most effective way to fix the issue.

About 8000 work orders were created and issued every year, by the team of five maintenance planners.

The data helped the planners spot potential issues that might arise, and work with maintenance staff to analyse root causes, make improvements and create new efficiencies.

Maintenance planner Ty Guiney said the planners were the gatekeepers of one of the largest amounts of asset data in the business.

“The real-time system means we can really plan out where our guys are going on a daily basis and save time. It’s allowed us to be a lot quicker in assigning and tracking work, and has saved resources,” Mr Guiney said.

The feed uses asset management system Maximo and its mobile application Maximo Anywhere to capture, record and report on the progress of work.