Recognized Breadth and Depth in Enterprise Solution Architecture
System Complete staff have provided the technical or managerial leadership on many major information technology projects and programs.
Government
GovNext
GovNext is a whole of Government information technology infrastructure buying arrangement encompassing both compute resources and network & communication systems. The GovNext programme requires the design of market mechanisms, technical standards and service definitions to ensure that competing providers created a whole of government network and compute platform able to ensure low friction market mechanisms and best price maintenance. The initiative is part of a national and international trend to centralize information technology infrastructure to allow for greater reused and significant asset consolidation. When applied in a government setting these initiatives typically produce savings of at least 30% and are underpinned by a approach to whole of government networking. Significant analysis of government spend and market behaviours were used to produce the solution blueprint, which was converted to a series of contractual undertakings allowing for essentially competing providers to work together to deliver the outcomes required by the State.
| Organisation | Office of the Chief information Officer |
| Size | Approx $3 Billion over 10 years |
| Activities |
Solution Design Vendor Liaison Commercial Negotiations Contract Writing |
Retail Contestability (Gas)
| Organisation | Alinta Energy |
| Size | 600,000 customers |
| Activities |
Business Analysis Integration Messaging |
The deregulation of the Western Australian gas market proceeded in a several stages. The first stage of deregulation involved only the largest consumes of gas in the State. Due to the limited number of parties the market could operated using manual processes. The second state of deregulation allowed for many more customers and providers to participate. The large number of participants required the design of market messaging mechanism and rules so that customers could change providers in a controlled orderly manner with few commercial or legal disputes or complications. Following trends in other jurisdictions the government mandated incumbent supplier was tasked with creation of the market and sought third party help in creating the market place. The systems involved are all electronic so the market place exists as a series of electronic messages exchanged between parties including suppliers, the network operator and retailers.
eLDP
As the Western Australian population changes there is a need to change land use especially in and near large population centers. The process requires multiple levels of government planning and oversight. Land owners engage in formalized a largely paper based system to receive approval to proceed. The handling of these paper records even when scanned is an impediment to efficient processing by the State and the land owners. The development of an Electronic land development process has the potential to create additional wealth and reduce costs. To realise the most benefit an electronic process, a level of process change and structured data capture is required. The eLDP project conducted analysis on the changes required and developed messaging in conjunction with other states to ensure a nationally unified approach.
| Organisation | Department of Planning |
| Size | Approx 25,000 lots per year |
| Activities |
Integration Architecture Integration Design Messaging Design Jurisdictional Coordination |
iDeliver
| Organisation | Landgate |
| Size | 300,000 Lodgements per year |
| Activities |
Solution Architecture Solution Design Team Leading Stakeholder Engagement Estimating Proof of Concept |
Much of Western Australia is privately owned. The definitive register of who owns what is controlled and administered by the State under the Torrens system which makes it impossible to dispute ownership. The register is manipulated by the State at the request of landowners using a paper based process. These processes required significant numbers of staff to execute and there are productivity benefits if the process was made electronic with some degree of automated processing of the checks required to complete each step in the process. iDeliver sought to use electronic means to both receive the requests electronically and complete many of the tasks automatically. Many of the organisations that issue requests operate nationally and a national system has benefits for these organisations. The processing and messaging accuracy is very important as the register is definitive and must be trustworthy.
StATS
Completing large scale projects within the State typically require approvals from many government agencies not only for land use changes but also for environmental, health &safety and cultural perspectives. A significant cost and timeline determinant of these projects is the approval process. Further often various agencies involved require similar information and the proponent is in the position of having to supply information multiple times or one department required information late in the process that no other department considered necessary. To streamline the interaction of the proponents of large projects with the state a Statutory Approvals Tracking System (StATS) was developed that can show where each approval is in its processes, the parties involved and key dates. The tool is used to help inform many parties including the proponents, the departments and indirectly the legislative layer of Government.
| Organisation | Landgate |
| Size | Typically projects over $100 million |
| Activities |
Solution Architecture Solution Design Stakeholder Engagement Estimating |
MetIndEx
| Organisation | Department of Lands (NSW) |
| Size | More than $2 trillion of assets |
| Activities |
Project Management Solution Architecture Solution Design Solution Development Team Leading |
The mineral wealth of the State is a valuable asset that is tracked for multiple reasons including indicating close supply of construction materials, showing areas of interesting mineralisation, and determining the approximate value of mineralisation known to exist under various models (technical and financial) for extracting the value. The Mineral, Industrial and Exploration resource tracking system (MetIndEx) contains all the information and is an online system available to staff within appropriate departments.
Commercial
Rail Historian
Shifting iron ore from mine to port through a rail network with multiple mines and operational constraints on the facilities requires good tracking of trains,their expected arrival time and departure times and the length and composition of the train. The Rail historian produces up to date rail information and provides the historical record of all ore and rolling stock movements to assist in operational and maintenance scheduling. It also provides key information to other supply chain systems that operate the loaders and dumpers.
| Organisation | BHP |
| Size | 300 million tonnes of ore transported per year |
| Activities |
Solution Architecture Team Leading Mentoring Implementing Proof of concept |
Woodchip
| Organisation | Woodside Energy |
| Size | 20,000 journeys a year |
| Activities |
Project Management Solution Architecture Ajile Mentoring Design Integration implementation |
Integration of the systems that plan and book the movement of personnel to and from processing plants and offshore platforms with those that move them from their place of residence allows for consistency in service and a reduction in the cost of providing the travel through greater use of lower fair classes and reduced manual intervention. The integration requires personal information such as place of residence, holidays booked and roster assigned to be extracted from human resource management systems, flight information and booking services from commercial airlines and private charter management services for the non public portions to be combined and itineraries be created subject to commercial and corporate rule sets. Components of this information are subject to change, for instance holidays are taken, commercial flights are cancelled or have their time changed. An automated system needs to understand these changes and make the necessary adjustments to the travel arrangements.
Operator Fatigue
Heavy equipment used in mining is dangerous and requires alert operators. Mining operations operate 24x7 and shift workers can have trouble remaining alert and focused at all times while the equipment is in motion. Failure to remain alert can cause death, injury or property damage. Systems that can detect operator alertness in not invasive manners have been develop and are being applied to mining operations. The systems work at two levels. At one level they alert the driver if distracted or asleep at the other level they alert management of operators that may be having trouble staying alert so they can be given the break they needed. To alert managers of issues requires the integration of the in cab systems with corporate network and management systems as near to real time as possible. Unfortunately the technology is not perfect and can react to events that do not indicate fatigue or distraction. The filtering of the centralised feed to only those that are real is necessary. Currently this requires human examination and classification. These operations may be onsite or remote.
| Organisation | BHP |
| Size | 400 vehicles monitored |
| Activities |
Solution Architecture Network Design Provider Co-ordination Testing and Troubleshooting |
Optimised Traffic Planner
| Organisation | Union Switch and Signal |
| Size | Hundreds of million in penalties per year |
| Activities |
Sales Project Management Solution Architecture Design Development Testing |
Large shared use rail networks take orders to move cargo from site to site under specific conditions of timeliness and cost. When a rail network is disrupted by accident, equipment failure, delays or act of God, the delivery of cargo is likely to be effected. Creating a new schedule or delivery that understands the penalties and reduces overall cost and delay is desired. However creating schedules that satisfy all the constraints is extremely difficult requiring months of human labour. Computer systems that can perform this operations as fast as possible are valuable are in active development. The problems is not one that has closed from solutions so efforts need to traverse a very large solutions space similar to but more complicated than playing chess. The tactical rail planner is a program that deals with the problem and attempts to make good schedule adjustments when subject to rail network disruption.
Max
Diversified insurers may have many products they are supplying to customers, each of these products may have its over provider (underwriter) and its own management systems. When dealing with the customer it is important to be able to talk to the customers interactions with the insurer not the customers interaction on a specific product. The creation of Customer Relationship management that shows the whole of customer view and is able to link to the appropriate provider systems where necessary allows for a much improved customer experience.
| Organisation | HBF |
| Size | 900,000 Customers |
| Activities |
Solution Architecture Integration Implementation Design |
Work Cloud
| Organisation | Ascender Pay |
| Size | $2 million |
| Activities |
Technical Due Diligence Product Evaluation Code Evaluation Process Evaluation |
Providers of global payroll systems need to deal with many different national laws and requirements. Sometimes it is more cost effective to acquire a systems tailored to a specific market and roll it into a more extensive product suite. The value of the acquired systems is dependent on many factors including the compliance with local law, the quality of the code, the expertise required to maintain and extend, and the existing customer base. When making acquisition decisions the provider needs to be aware of and evaluate in terms of all these criteria.
Integration Practice
A common approach to reducing information technology costs is to reuse rather than recreate. Organisations typically have a number of information technology system to support the business each with its own niche. It is often necessary to link these systems together to realise a business benefit. An integration practice can reduce the incremental linkages by establishing expertise in end system integration arrangements and by having a standard and reusable approach. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is often part of the reusable approach. The goal is to meet changing business requirements with only minor changes to the integration. Establishing an Integration practice requires expertise to be acquired, standards and approaches to be set and governance applied to ensure adherence to the standards.
| Organisation | HBF |
| Size | 10,000 development hours per year |
| Activities |
Practice Establishment Practice Management Standard Setting |
Practice Lead
| Organisation | Ajilon Australia |
| Size | 250 Practitioners |
| Activities |
Bid review & preparation Pre-sales collateral Resourcing Practice engagement Trouble shooting Standard setting |
It is not possible to research all aspects of all purchasing decisions. Buyers use brands to reduce the research required in purchasing. The brand is useful why it represents an expected degree of quality. For a information technology consultancy the quality is associated with the delivered outcomes and approach. Consultancies use hiring practices, internal processes and training and mentoring to provide consistence. Typically the internal review and mentoring processes and conducted by recognised experts. Architecture, Development, Testing and Integration practices are all technical disciplines and require technical expertise to review and mentor. Being a practice lead indicates mastery of the discipline and an high degree of skill of the topic and surrounding areas.