Transpower plays a central role in New Zealand’s power industry, owning and operating the National Grid and managing the power system as System Operator. Transpower transports electricity from where it is generated to cities, towns and some major industrial users 24/7.
Responsible for the towers, poles, lines, cables and substations stretching and connecting the length and breadth of New Zealand, Transpower manages 11,743 route km of high voltage transmission line, a 60 route km of underground and submarine transmission cable, 40,674 supporting towers and poles, 178 substations and 1,093 transformers.
Operating to a Zero Harm philosophy, Transpower needed a central view of facilities, assets and hazards serving as a single source of truth for Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) risks.
Certus Digital crafted a HSE solution that enhanced Maximo’s standard pre-configuration to meet the organisation’s requirements.
The HSE team at Transpower now operates a single application that enables reporting of all incidents including work, personnel, safety, health, and environmental areas.
Relying on a number of end-of-life legacy systems to gain a complete picture of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) in the workplace, Transpower was unable to effectively manage corrective actions for incidents. The organisation was also beset by poor data integrity and a labour intensive reporting process, which did not meet the needs of the organisation’s strong ‘Zero Harm’ safety culture.
“We rely on members of our team at Transpower as well as Third Party Service providers to log HSE incidents as they occur so that we can remove potential hazards to our employees and the general public as quickly as possible. Before we moved to a Maximo HSE platform, we were relying on a number of systems to manage HSE data. This was not only cumbersome to manage, it also created a lag effect in us being able to implement a corrective action, which increased the potential for further HSE incidents,” said Michael O’Brien, Asset Information Systems Manager at Transpower.
In a New Zealand first, Certus Digital implemented IBM Maximo Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Manager at Transpower. Implemented during a second release of Maximo Enterprise Asset Manager at the organisation, Certus first conducted a series of sessions with key stakeholders to determine both the organisational requirements and user preferences in order to implement the Maximo HSE applications that would provide the most value to the Transpower business. Says O’Brien, “Certus helped us understand the functionality available through Maximo HSE and worked closely with us to determine which preconfigured options made the most sense for our business. As a result, we now have the HSE management and reporting capability we need.”
With the solution, Transpower has clear visibility into incidents, hazards and precautions, together with risk assessments and progress monitoring. Aligned with the organisation’s Maximo EAM platform, the HSE team can also determine the location of all assets and track communications throughout the risk escalation process.
Since the implementation of a single Maximo HSE platform, Transpower has a valuable source of information that is central to the HSE department’s ability to take corrective action in a timely and efficient manner. With a single source of truth, the external audit process has also been greatly simplified, and overall, the organisation a higher level of accountability for safety – from evaluating non-conforming specifications on plans and equipment to risk prioritisation.
“Our organisation is driven by a Zero Harm philosophy, and the ability for us to see all HSE data in a single view makes it far easier for us to track and manage risk. The improved data quality available through this solution, together with the simplified reporting functionality has also helped us generate more accurate reports – something that we have been commended on by the industry auditor.
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