Datastream Software Links Six Campuses to One Maintenance Network

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The University of South Australia is one of the newest and largest universities in Australia. With six different campuses across the state of South Australia, the university is home to over 24,000 students and 2,000 staff members.

The university has maintenance groups at each campus to help maintain the numerous buildings and equipment. Maintenance groups based on-site handle the routine day-to-day maintenance, while a Mobile Maintenance Project team handles more in-depth projects on the campuses. A total of 40 maintenance personnel is responsible for maintaining the 158 buildings, 8,656 rooms, and 235,446 square meters (2,534,341 square feet) of facility space.

The University of South Australia prides itself on a customer service focus—for maintenance and all other campus services—with the faculty, staff, and students as the primary customers. The university needs a high degree of maintenance accountability and structure to maintain their goal of increased customer service.

The Challenge
The University of South Australia's maintenance department had a number of criteria going into the search for asset management software. To maintain the customer service ideal, the staff knew it needed better data to make better decisions.

"It was clear we had a shortage of management data," says Neville Thiele, manager of services. "That was our primary driving force. We wanted to know what our maintenance staff was doing, how they were doing it, and how to plan for better utilization of our total maintenance resources."

The maintenance staff established a set of priorities for choosing a maintenance software solution. One priority was finding an adaptable system that could link the different sites, each having a separate maintenance structure.

"It had to be a solution that could work across a Wide Area Network (WAN)," says Thiele. "In terms of functionality, we needed something that could cope with multiple sites."

"We also needed a system that had variable levels of access. We have a number of different people that perform various roles. The system we chose needed to have one administrative level for entering work requests and another level for tracking the requests."

Another key element for the university's maintenance operation was technical support and services. Since the department had no previous technology-based asset management solution in place, any new system would require a large-scale push from the computer software supplier and from the university.

"We did no come from another system, so we were starting from nothing in terms of computer-based solutions," says Vince Edge, campus services manager at the Magill campus. "We had certain amounts of expertise in terms of information technology. But, we needed to know we could depend on—and have total belief in—the support from any vendor we chose."

The Solution
After evaluating several maintenance management software packages, Thiele and his colleagues selected an asset management solution from Datastream. The system provides a tool for the maintenance staff to prepare work orders and work requests, schedule work requests, and assign labor schedules. Datastream software also provided the staff with reporting capabilities to analyze the maintenance department's turnaround time, the frequency of tasks, trade allocation, and scheduled-skills benchmarking.

The staff felt that Datastream offered the most complete package on the market because of its strong technical support and professional services. "We needed a product that had a significant Australian presence that we could partner with," Thiele says. "Datastream committed their organization to our organization. That dedication was critical in our decision." 

The school's diverse and widespread campuses provide a unique challenge for linking the entire maintenance process. Datastream was a perfect fit for the university's maintenance practices and procedures. The maintenance groups use a system that allows its "front office" administrative staff to make requests. Then, the site coordinators compile the requests for scheduling. That maintenance system was familiar to all employees, enabling Thiele to implement a system that would not require an entire re-education of the services staff.

"There's been no extensive change in our procedures and practices," Thiele says. "Our practices and Datastream's asset management solution are very compatible. In addition, it is very adaptable, so we didn't have to change the way we did things to accommodate the system."

The Results
Within months of implementation, Datastream became a significant part of the university's maintenance structure. By the end of the first six months, all relevant information was already in the software's database.

"All work is generated on Datastream software," Thiele says. "If it doesn't exist in the system, it doesn't exist. All of our maintenance department's day-to-day activities—including setting up rooms for exams and other standard work order activity on the campuses—come from work orders prepared by the Datastream solution."

Using Datastream, the maintenance department generates approximately 1,250 work orders per month for the six campuses. The university has five users per site who are responsible for entering job requests and printing work orders and reports.

With the increased availability of information, the maintenance staff is able to make better decisions. For example, a quick data analysis of labor usage helps management make personnel decisions. "Recently, we used the data from Datastream's software for justification in retaining the trade staff on a particular campus," Thiele says. "If that data was not available, we may have removed the staff—needlessly."

Thiele also believes that using Datastream has increased the overall responsiveness of the maintenance departments. Because the maintenance organization has so many "clients" located across such a wide area, response time and service quality are crucial.

"Datastream's asset management solution gives us more structure in our client-service functions," Thiele says. "The client-service coordinators now have a useful tool with which to work. In addition, it is very easy for us to measure performance management criteria for crafts, like plumbers and carpenters, because we have a tool that keeps track of their work. With Datastream, we have that kind of structure."