Top of their game We hear from the four finalists in Corporate Transformation section of the IAM Excellence Awards 2022 Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department, US Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department (PBCWUD) is a county-owned utility that provides potable water, wastewater, and reclaimed water services to 600,000 residents. It is the third-largest water provider in the state of Florida. In 2015, as a result of intensive infrastructure study, system analysis, and master planning sessions, PBCWUD identified the need for more than US$5bn in repair and replacement costs throughout its service area over the next 35 years. The organisation realised that to carry out these projects in a cost-efficient and effective manner, the current organisational arrangements and siloed thinking had to be transformed. In 2016, senior leadership decided to implement an ISO 55001-compliant asset management system across the organisation and chose executive sponsors to lead this change and plan what needed to be done. Part of the executive teams role in steering and preparing the organisation for the changes was to develop an asset management improvement programme suited to the pace and needs of the organisation. Stantec was selected to help develop this roadmap and provide guidance in ISO 55001. Stantec also served as an internal audit for the scheduled maturity assessments. The asset management improvement programme was broken down into actions, and categorised into documentation, people, processes, systems, data, risk, and supply chain. Employees from across the business were trained and developed their knowledge on a wide range of asset management topics. A framework was established that supported the definition of organisational arrangements, setting out roles and responsibilities across the IAMs 39 subject areas. PBCWUD became the first water and wastewater utility in North America to have achieved ISO 55001 certification. It undertook the asset management journey to assure regulators, customers, and other stakeholders that assets and services are efficiently managed to ensure an abundant supply of fresh, high-quality drinking water for the future and keep average household service fees low. Gaining the certification proved the utilitys commitment to best practices and continuous improvement in core business functions. PBCWUD also won the North America Corporate Transformation Award in 2022. PBCWUD became the first water and wastewater utility in North America to have achieved ISO 55001 certification PBCWUD explains more about its achievements Environment Agency, UK The Environment Agency (EA) is a UK non-departmental public body with responsibilities relating to enhancing and protecting the environment in England. The Agency operates and maintains more than 150,000 assets with a fixed asset rebuild cost exceeding 40bn, across four asset management portfolios: protecting the homes and businesses of more than two million people from flood risk supporting resilient water supplies navigable waterways monitoring water and air quality across the country. The four portfolios have historically been managed independently, resulting in different asset management models that have aligned to partitions in policy, funding and operational requirements. Now the focus on climate resilience and adaptation is driving an integration policy to deliver the realisation of multiple benefits across the Agencys asset base. This provided opportunities to create a single corporate-wide platform and to align data structures and working processes across the EAs asset management activities. AMX Solutions (AMX) was selected to deliver the Enterprise Asset Management system. The implementation of the new system impacted on significant numbers of staff across the business and required strong visible leadership by the senior team. It was built on a clear vision of a corporate asset management strategy that had already been presented across the business. The development of the findings from the discovery phase into preliminary and then final design and widescale user acceptance testing relied heavily on the support of a broad group of system matter experts, business analysts and the delivery partner. This engagement not only enabled the soft landing of the system, but has informed the development of enhanced functionality and encouraged other asset owners within the business to seek inclusion in future expansion programmes. Bespoke training packages were developed to ensure subject relevance and practitioner competence and ongoing support of sufficient staff numbers to assure business continuity throughout. The operational applications and the data harvested through the new asset management system will optimise its asset usage and ultimately reduce risk to people and wildlife as the EA manages the effects of the climate emergency. The implementation of a new asset information management system impacted on significant numbers of staff across the business and required strong visible leadership by the senior team Environment Agency explains more about its achievements Expenditure and Projects Efficiency Authority (EXPRO), KSA The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has an ambitious vision to raise the efficiency and quality of its infrastructure to be among the best in the world. The challenge to improve the efficiency and quality of asset and facility management in governmental entities lies in developing unified national standards and methodologies for operations and maintenance. That includes adoption of international best practices, enhancing the level of transparency, ensuring resource optimisation, and national capability enhancement. EXPRO leads on the development of national policies and strategies for the efficiency of planning and spending. EXPRO developed the National Assets & Facilities Management Manual covering a range of areas including: asset management; operations and maintenance management; risk management; contracts management; supply chain; health, safety and the environment; and energy and sustainability. EXPRO carried out an in-depth portfolio Modular Maturity Assessment for government services aligned to the National Assets & Facilities Management Manual, ISO 55001, and ISO 55010. Its analysis of the government supply chain and service delivery systems revealed how the scale and the pace of development has led to proliferation of unstandardised asset and facility management practices, which in turn has led to unprecedented operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses, and accelerated value erosion of the government asset base. The findings were shared with the respective entities to articulate the need and urgency for the change. Operating models were developed to establish entities organisational backbone and in-house capability to sustain the nationwide transformation. The first phase of the transformation journey started by prioritising 22 government entities that had approximately 80 per cent share of the national O&M budget. EXPRO Facility Management Resident Teams (FMRT) were embedded within the entities to perform the organisation diagnostic and structural reform to support the O&M transformation. In collaboration with the 22 bodies, EXPRO FMRT identified new roles and supported the development of business cases to improve the overall planning and budgeting capability of each. EXPRO also focused on enhancing the skills of Saudi nationals to deliver the asset and facility management services. EXPRO Facility Management Resident Teams (FMRT) were embedded within the entities to perform the organisation diagnostic and structural reform to support the O&M transformation EXPRO explains more about its achievements KPMG/Irish Water, Ireland Irish Water (IW) was established in 2013 to bring water and wastewater services from the 31 local authorities in Ireland together under one national service provider. It is a publicly owned, regulated, commercial state body serving 1.8m domestic and business customers through the operation of 718 water and 1,063 wastewater treatment plants. Under-investment over many decades, paired with a highly fragmented water services operating model, had resulted in ageing and disjointed infrastructure and a number of legacy issues in treatment plants and networks. As a result, the repair and upgrading of the countrys water and wastewater treatment plants, and water and sewer networks requires a capital investment programme of greater than 1bn per year for multiple projected investment cycles. It was quickly understood that the problems IW faced were best solved in a cross-functional and collaborative manner. IW worked with KPMG to create an organisation-wide, cross-functional transformational change project named Project Clarity, which was evaluated in full by a third-party reviewer (Scottish Water International). The core objective and purpose of the project was to create a highly coordinated, effective, efficient and safe end-to-end capital investment planning and delivery capability for IW. Cross-functional collaboration and maximum involvement from IW staff were key objectives of the transformation project. The schemes governance structure consisted of 10 working groups, each with an IW and KPMG lead. All deliverables were reviewed at a Design Alignment committee before being approved to progress to the Project Steering Group that consisted of six IW senior managers. KPMG and IW also had overarching project managers who were responsible for driving the project and reporting to IWs nonexecutive Board and the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. The final objective of Project Clarity was to ensure that it did not just focus on designing a suite of new standard operating procedures and then disband. It was critical that through business-as-usual processes these are constantly reviewed and updated as best practice develops and asset management approaches continuously change. The success of the project would ultimately hinge on the rolling out of the identified changes. KPMG supported with project communications and training, using subject matter experts within IW. Once training for all aspects had been delivered, a community of practice approach was established to drive continuous improvement. The overarching business benefit is that the processes and controls that have been developed have driven confidence across the organisation and with external stakeholders. The scalable nature of the Project Clarity solutions ensures that they are adaptable to the envisaged level of increased capital expenditure over time. Once training for all aspects had been delivered, a community of practice approach was established to drive continuous improvement Irish Water and KPMG explain more about Project Clarity