Balfour Beatty Living Places and AMX: The core of Herefordshire's success
Background
Herefordshire Council have been using AMX as part of their structures asset management strategy for over 5 years, operated and managed by a third-party contractor: Balfour Beatty Living Places. In 2015 they completed their upgrade from BMX to AMX at which point it became clear that there was considerable opportunity to develop the system further, incorporating other strategic needs within the broader asset management team, replacing other systems and bringing together all of their asset data under one roof. Initially, the objectives were to become proficient at using AMX for Lifecycle Planning for Structures and using AMX Mobile for Bridge Inspections. Once established and with valuable data being gathered, interrogated and reported faster than before, the team were able to adapt the system to achieve the same benefits for Highways by importing their Highway Network data (NSG) and adding Drainage and Flood Risk assets. Then in 2017, they took the decision to apply the same principles into Street Lighting.
How AMX is used?
Within Herefordshire Council, AMX is used across multiple asset management and construction teams including structures, highways, street lighting, drainage and flood risk. Managing a complex inventory of over 17,000 assets, collection of data needs to be quick and easy; analysing asset status and scheduled tasks must be adaptable and reporting on conditions and progress straightforward. The addition of AMX Mobile supports the daily activities carried out by four inspectors and enables flexibility to change planned works and react to faults without affecting productivity.
Financial Reward
With stringent budgets being imposed on infrastructure teams the need for visibility and accurate forecasting has become increasingly important. Accurate deterioration modelling and complex risk evaluations of assets is essential for Team Leaders and, particularly for contracting firms such as Balfour Beatty Living Places.
With AMX, the integrated lifecycle planning function eases this process and, in this instance, supported the case for securing the council’s share of the Government’s Incentive Fund. The evidence-based condition scoring, deterioration rates and operating cost analysis also clearly demonstrated the need for additional funds to avoid the council facing 20 bridge and highway closures within 10 years. Based on the evidence presented, additional funding was allocated to structures from the council’s Productivity Fund award in 2017. A further investment business case is also being submitted to secure further additional funding over the 2018-22 period. In addition to the strategic benefits, they have also been able to improve their staff resource allocation. The AMX Mobile application significantly reduces paperwork thus removing the need for simple data entry and instead allowing them to focus on technically skilled individuals who can add value and increase productivity in daily operations.
The experience
Throughout the upgrade and customisation process the AMX team were proactive. There were regular visits to the office to demonstrate features and provide training and the technical knowledge and understanding of the different sector requirements meant that any adjustments that were needed or issues that arose were efficiently resolved. As time progresses it is now possible to internally adapt and evolve the system with AMX support to incorporate more strategic objectives because the core data is already all in one place.
Next Steps
Already the lifecycle planning feature is being used to formulate a more accurate five year cost-analysis proposal for the entire Asset Management Department, with a view to quantifying the required annual spend and through evidence based information demonstrating the need for a threefold increase. Due to the adaptable nature of the system and by having fully trained, industry qualified users in-house, it is possible to expand the application of the system even further within the infrastructure team. Having already developed their own module for drainage to meet the requirements of the Flood & Water Management Act, the Herefordshire team are looking to utilise AMX for planned maintenance for Highways and integrate with Confirm.
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"AMX ‘s lifecycle planning feature helped us to secure an additional £3 million from the Incentive Fund to allocate against the annual Asset Management Budget for Herefordshire Council in the 2016-21 period. We have found AMX to be an easy-to-use and intuitive system that we have been able to develop for one area but then scale across our service into differing asset areas and services. The AMX team has supported us in achieving our service goals as part of this."
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Richard Perkins, Asset Management Team Leader,
Balfour Beatty Living Places / Herefordshire Council
