Sydney Water seeks new IT services pathfinder

NSW government water supply utility Sydney Water is seeking program and project delivery services for two of its “pathfinder” programs, both of which are in IT.

At Sydney Water, pathfinder programs define and establish new strategic IT business capabilities.

The two IT programs are the Sydney Water Information Management (SWIM) program, designed to raise Sydney Water’s information management capability and provide a platform for future improvements; and the business intelligence (BI) program aimed at designing an architecture, platform, competency centre, new operating models, business processes and behaviours based on the Business Objects (SAP-owned) suite.

A common BI environment is now used by some 600 Sydney Water staff.

“[Pathfinder programs] are typically enterprise wide, do not a follow a well proven path and accordingly will comprise a significant element of organisational discovery and development of new intellectual property,” according to the department.

Consequently, pathfinder programs are run from the IT strategy and architecture team and require engagement with Sydney Water enterprise architects and business IT leaders.

Sydney Water is seeking a contracting role “to ensure the successful delivery of assigned programs” with an initial term of three years and options for two more one-year periods.

In addition, subsequent pathfinder programs may also draw on the services available under this contract.

The objectives of the SWIM program are to deploy information management capabilities needed to improve document management for “consistent management of electronic documents in a single system with record keeping and security”; collaboration to support team work on documents during projects; and workflow for automating “our manual and paper intensive processes” to improve performance and reduce paper.

SWIM also involves Web publishing to improve communications and searching to creating a single place to search for information stored in disparate locations.

According to Sydney Water, “The SWIM program is based on the Oracle Unified Content Management System product and an enterprise search technology that is currently being procured.

“The ECM and enterprise search solutions are to being provisioned via an IBM Portal Server environment.”

Sydney Water's BI strategy is focused on increasing demands from regulators and improving insights and planning processes across its business units.

The BI program has been developing since 2006 and, to date, has delivered two capability projects and five business solution projects within the areas of water monitoring (Monitoring & EKAMS systems), water network operations (IICATS system), finance and people management.

BI projects in progress are safety, asset maintenance (Maximo system) and customer relations.

Sydney Water has more than $20 billion in assets, some 3200 staff, and a capital expenditure program of about $1.2 billion for 2008 to 2009.

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