How Sequana improved management and reporting of a large infrastructure works program.
Sequana is an Australian consultancy specialising in providing expert advisory services for major water infrastructure projects. They excel in governance, risk management, and strategic planning, acting as client-side project and program managers. Their services span the entire project lifecycle, from initial planning and approvals to construction and operations. Sequana's expertise lies in navigating complex regulatory environments and delivering successful outcomes for government and private sector clients, ensuring robust governance and risk mitigation for critical water infrastructure.
In project management, better data helps control the only things that matter: scope and budget.
The Challenge
Sequana's Managing Partners were engaged to lead a reset of the $2 billion Goulburn Murray Water Connections Project, Australia's largest irrigation modernisation effort. The project faced budgetary and performance challenges, which resulted in costs of $500 million and a 4-year time blowout.
Early on, Sequana's Project Director identified data integrity as one of the key issues causing delays. The project had hundreds of thousands of assets-bridges, channels, meters, and thousands of customers - which were tracked across multiple Excel files. The lack of data confidence, as well as the disparate and inaccurate data sets severely impacted decision making. Teams were unable to forecast accurately, make plans and meet project milestones.
I would receive only monthly reports, and each of these reports would be hundreds of pages of fine-print data. The asset team would put together one file, the operations team another, and there would be these disparities in the data. One file wouldn't line up with another when I looked at the numbers. I would ask a few questions about it, until it became clear that the team had to go back and make changes to the data sets.
Our Solution
Sequana engaged the SafetyInsights team to provide a holistic project management dashboard environment to improve operations and mitigate further cost and time overruns. They required a solution to accurately monitor progress, validate water savings, and enable ease of contractor performance and compliance management. They also needed a tool to facilitate operational and safety auditing and reporting.
Working closely with the Sequana team, we developed a comprehensive data modelling approach to implement SafetyInsights for program-wide data and performance tracking. Our solution integrated predictive and augmented analytics, enhancing decision-making capabilities. We also delivered training and data literacy programs, ensuring the Sequana team could maximise the value of their data. Additionally, we implemented GeoAnalytics, REST connectors, and other data integration solutions to streamline operations.
The Impact
The implementation of SafetyInsights helped Sequana to improve operations and refine project delivery. They achieved enhanced water-saving outcomes and positively impacted stakeholder management
Project Delivery
The project was delivered on time, within budget and was live and operational within 4 weeks. Detrimental to this success was team confidence in information accuracy.
Data Quality
With SafetyInsights, the project returned a 500% improvement in data integrity and quality. As information was centralised, transparent and up-to-date, teams could communicate effectively and accurately monitor progress.
Accuracy and Efficiency
Program status reports reduced from 1 week completion time to 30 minutes. Planning ability also greatly improved and the team achieved 95% accuracy in 6-month forecasting to support funding.
As part of our SaaS offering for GMW, we continue to provide ongoing software upgrades, training, and 24/7 service support, ensuring seamless performance and continuous innovation.
Key Results
Solution development and onboarding
Improvement in data quality and integrity
Increase in operational efficiency
Improvement in forecasting accuracy and integrity
Testimonial
“In project management, better data helps control the only things that matter: scope and budget. We needed a solution that reconciled these disparate data sets, otherwise planning would continue to be a nightmare.
I came across the people at SafetyInsights here in Australia who helped me assess our needs. They invited me to look at another construction business that had implemented this analytics platform.
After seeing that first presentation, I was hooked. Witnessing how they used the platform, I saw exactly what I was looking for: simple, up-to-date, real-time data with easy grabs.”
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