Background

Sydney Trains operates the rail sector of the Transport for NSW cluster, and maintains over 756,000 rail assets that includes 1,643km of track, 1,576km of overhead wiring, 2,191 electric and diesel fleet cars, 1,311 bridges and 308 stations. It has an annual maintenance budget of $1.2 billion and an asset portfolio valued at over $35 billion.

Business Challenge

In 2014, Sydney Trains conducted a review of its asset management capability and identified major strategic, operational, financial and safety risks due to the state of existing asset management systems, processes and practices. For Sydney Trains to remain competitive, meet forward projections for customer demand, improve reliability and safety a step change in business process and technology was required.

Asset Management Results

The key to achieving this goal was developing a world-class asset management capability. The EAM Program was a large and complex initiative with the key objective being to transform the way in which Sydney Trains operates its asset management function, a core business capability. The introduction of the EAM Program resulted in a huge leap forward in asset information management, underpinned by new technology, centralised master data governance and common processes.
With a capital budget of $273M and running over 3 years; at its peak 550 resources were mobilised onto the program to deliver major technological and operational change to over 7,500 front line staff phased over 3 releases with the final release aligned and integrated in parallel with an ERP Program.

CMC provided the following key resources in critical roles to Sydney Trains:

Program Director

Full accountability for all aspects of the program from inception of the business case through program mobilisation, execution, deployment handover and closure.

EAM Program Manager Design and Delivery (Solution Manager)

Responsible for Design of Solution and Business Processes, Platform and Integration Development and Testing and Data Management.

Business Transformation Change Management

Engaged to develop the business case, CMC’s consultant then led the end to end communications for the vision of the program, business benefits and implementation strategy at all levels of the organisation, including the Board. CMC executed the phased implementation plan to drive full adoption of the EAM platform, a fully digitised, single source of truth portal that will continue to realise multi-million dollar benefits over 10 years. Lean management methodologies were utilised to optimise business efficiencies, establishing a governance framework and managing a large budget, in addition to overseeing training for the full user group and leading a team of 100 Change Management staff at its peak whilst transitioning 4,500 users from paper to electronic recording systems.

Key Achievements

Key achievements of the Sydney Trains Enterprise Asset Management Program included:

  • Mobilisation of the program in record time under strict government procurement regulations and organisational labour constraints.
  • Delivery of the program to time; scope; and within the budget envelope through managing complex program and organisational risks with key stakeholders.
  • Established Business Data Transformation capability to manage significant data construction, migration harmonisation and modernisation of 25 million records.
  • Master Data Strategy, Master Data Framework, Data Organisation Governance Board, processes and procedures including the implementation of sophisticated MDM workflow tools to automate the management of Master Data Change.
  • Managed multiple executive stakeholders across government agencies within the TfNSW cluster and complex business structures.
  • Managed the delivery of highly complex technical solutions requiring alignment of multiple large programs; and multiple internal and external IT departments and third-party vendors and suppliers.
  • Delivered a Common Operating Model (COM) including lean, end-to-end business processes, decommissioning 24 legacy systems and standardising 90 common business processes, modernisation of 25 million data records and delivery of end-to-end training to 7,500 operational users.
  • Developed and implemented an Integrated Business Process Architecture and structured framework.
  • Drove the implementation of Mobile technology across the enterprise to underpin the delivery of EAM to 5,000 front line staff.
  • Developed an organisational change management model to mitigate operational risk to service disruption.
  • Received the ABA100 2017 Change Management Award from the Australian Business Association.