Western Australia Department of Communities

SUMMARY

Western Australia Department of Communities implemented PMWeb SaaS to manage a two-year $220 million housing refurbishment and maintenance program, providing procurement, project management, and contract management functionality. Over 40,000 asset records were imported to PMWeb, with implementation for “soft Go Live” 7 weeks from kick-off.

OVERVIEW

The Western Australia Department of Communities (Communities) went to market in 2019 with an RFI for a fully integrated Asset Management, Project and Contract Management (AMPAC) system, intending to then move to an RFT in 2020/2021. Following the COVID-19 crisis, the WA government announced a $340+ million stimulus package focused on the housing sector, which included approximately $220 million in refurbishment and maintenance of existing housing assets over a two-year period. Communities identified 3 respondents to the RFI and shortlisted them for an RFT to provide a SaaS-based system to manage the refurbishment work.

CHALLENGE

The focus of the new system to manage this program of works was Procurement, Project Management, and Contract Management; but it was also essential that all projects could be tied to existing assets.

Although Communities did not procure the full Asset Management Module, the standard PMWeb SaaS service includes Asset Explorer – a powerful tool that allows the organization of asset records by location and the linking of projects to those locations. This was particularly important in this program of work because many projects will be linked to many different assets and many different locations for one project.

SOLUTION

PMWeb’s COTS (commercial off the shelf, also known as out of the box) functionality allows the easy linking of assets to projects; however, in this instance, the linking of a great number of assets to the one project could have been burdensome to the users. Working with the Communities, a streamlined approach was developed and configured to implement PMWeb accordingly. More than 40,000 asset records were imported to PMWeb to facilitate the linking process.

RESULTS AND BENEFITS

PMWeb’s standard SaaS functionality (Project Management, Contract Management, Workflow, Document Management, and Business Intelligence reporting/analytics) was progressively configured to Communities requirements. Communities also procured the Planning Module in order to manage online tenders, so this area was also configured to Communities requirements. A number of integrations were completed, including:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX, the enterprise financial system used by Communities
• Active Directory, using SAML to connect with the Microsoft Azure cloud arrangement that Communities already had in place
• Communities Data Warehouse operation, using Microsoft PowerBI and a PowerBI gateway from PMWeb. A Quick Start approach was followed to the implementation, assisted by a “hands-on” Communities Project Manager and his team. Configuration, integration, migration of asset data, and training were completed for “soft Go Live” 7 weeks from the 15 June 2020 kick-off, with additional Communities users added progressively.