University of New South Wales Achieves Operational Excellence Goals with Archibus

Multi-Phase Rollout Addresses Multiple Targets

Phase 1 of UNSW’s Archibus implementation addressed a number of challenges as FM staff migrated from Excel spreadsheets to the new online system. Those challenges started with considerations such as preserving data integrity as information was re-keyed into the new system, conducting an accurate space migration, the all important IT design & build challenges, and the need to establish an active and informed project committee.

“To that end, we needed the involvement of our IT department from Day 1, and they were. To also align our space managers we had to demonstrate that we could produce the data they required in a more easily accessible and useful form. That meant developing a highly graphical space console that, among other capabilities, let
them navigate through floor plans to show space allocations, emergency egress, and so on,” notes Costello.

Space and maintenance capabilities were further enhanced by data available in Archibus applications that included Clean Building, Condition Assessment, and Emergency Preparedness.

The university also needed a project information management system (PIMS) to handle facilities related projects. During 2011, for example, the university spent over $178 million on physical infrastructure. The PIMS system, therefore, had to be highly capable in managing budgets and expenditures, financial plans, forecasts, and project plans.

“The PIMS system had to work with the university’s PeopleSoft system,” Costello observes. “The Archibus implementation can be thought of as a sub-ledger that carries all the details of a project like approvals, but with purchase order, invoicing
and other key financial information being shared with PeopleSoft so that the finance and facilities people could access their required management information.”

Online Space Audits, Streamlined SLA Workflows

In Phase 2 of the implementation, department heads and others who were tracking and managing all the changes that occurred in the university’s various schools, completed an online space audit. Now audit responsibilities are shared locally, and UNSW’s annual space audits are completed in only two weeks.

Also in Phase 2, the building operations SLA workflow was simplified by adding a supervisor grouping scheme which required only two SLAs — for unscheduled and scheduled maintenance — using On Demand Work and Preventive Maintenance, respectively. Service requests could be approved more quickly by supervisors via
Archibus Mobile Framework applications that run on iPhones and iPads.

Using custom workflows, the university has recovered $500,000 in reactive maintenance costs and cut space audit times down to only two weeks; also, they are responding more effectively to 25,000 annual reactive maintenance requests and 54,000 annual preventive maintenance work orders, with a combined billing value of $11 million annually.

The value of capital projects managed through PIMS has increased to $284 million, while the Archibus Asset Management application is now tracking 46,500 assets with a replacement value of $250 million.

The web-based work request system, furthermore, has reduced the number of service calls logged manually by the FM department from 53% in 2012 to 26% in 2013.

“In the future, we plan to share more Archibus desktop and mobile functionality with UNSW units outside the FM department and build reporting capabilities linked to KPIs,” adds Costello. “And through an iterative process, we’ll also continue streamlining workflow processes and automating more services to reach our intended goals.”