Building best practice foundations: City of Stirling
ICT Case Study
The City of Stirling covers an area of 100 square kilometres and has a thriving population of almost 180,000 people living in 80,000 homes across 30 suburbs. Stirling is one of the largest metropolitan cities by area and is the largest by population in Western Australia.
Official opening of the new administration building
At the official opening of Stirling’s new Civic Complex on 19 March City of Stirling CEO Lindsay Delahaunty said the move to the new complex represented a significant achievement for the council and Stirling’s administration.
“Our new civic home uses the latest design and construction technology and houses state-of-the-art communications equipment. It is one of the most significant projects ever undertaken by the City of Stirling,” Mr Delahaunty said.
The new complex covers 14,000 square metres of floor area of which 8500 square metres are for Stirling’s administration offices—a four-level building plus a basement—and 3000 square metres is for council facilities. The new complex is constructed on 3.2 hectares or 32,000 square metres of land and was completed on schedule and within its $33.2 million budget.
Technology journey leading to the relocation
The City of Stirling’s journey with technology partner TSA Corporation started in September 2002. TSA established a project management office that managed the complete cycle including tender selection, negotiation, implementation and on-going development of a complete set of new core business applications.
The applications included land information, financial, works asset management and document management systems. TSA’s Knowledge Network of specialists worked with key Stirling staff to identify essential improvement areas and the relationship continues today.
IT Strategic Plan
In January 2004 TSA was awarded a contract to create a strategic plan for Stirling’s IT environment. The primary goal was to benchmark Stirling’s IT services against best practice and then map a delivery path to achieve agreed outcomes. The City decided on an option that would involve TSA helping to implement essential components of the plan.
Caretaker Chief Information Officer service
In August 2004 TSA director Greg Davidson was appointed as caretaker chief information officer until Stirling could recruit an appropriate senior level person to lead the IT business unit.
Greg’s depth of experience gained from over 29 years in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry and the backing of other senior TSA people was a critical success factor in setting the foundations and guiding the path forward for the City of Stirling’s ICT business unit. The primary focus was to refine service delivery to enable a best practice journey while still focusing on operational priorities. The main operational priority was the relocation of critical infrastructures, applications and telecommunications services for nearly 400 employees who would be located in the new building while still providing IT services to more than 1000 full-time and casual employees.
Greg focused on operational and budgetary issues while fellow TSA director Con Polkinghorne concentrated on future strategy and core business application functionality and integration, completing a comprehensive and contingent CIO Service.
The search for an appropriate senior level person to lead the ICT business unit was extensive and a new full time chief technology officer was appointed in March 2005.
City’s largest ICT project a huge success
TSA led the planning and management of the highly successful transition into Stirling’s new administration building, the final step in more than eight months of planning and negotiation, while guiding improvements in the team’s service culture.
City of Stirling’s IT operations team leader Craig Cooke said that having the backup of TSA’s specialists leading up to and during the relocation meant the transition to the new building was smooth.
“Greg’s leadership combined with the flexibility of being able to use TSA specialists to backfill and complement Stirling’s IT team when our resources were stretched was critical to our success,” Craig said. The City’s executive team agreed that the move into the new building represented a one-off opportunity to completely review the enterprise architecture.
CEO Lindsay Delahaunty said the move to the new building was seamless and delivered by a great team effort from internal staff and external service providers.
“Over the March 5 to 7 long weekend there were some super human efforts made by Stirling’s IT staff to ensure that systems were operational on the Tuesday morning,” Mr Delahaunty said.
“This was an amazing achievement with all operations open for business on time. Many thanks to Greg Davidson and his dedicated staff for achieving such a great result.”
Further details on this project can be viewed from minutes of the IT update delivered by Mr Ed Herne, Director, Corporate Resource Management at the Corporate and Community Services Committee on 22 March, 2005 available on Stirling’s website www.stirling.wa.gov.au
Summary
This case study highlights the need for organisations to recognise normal in-house limitations when delivering essential business services. Most organisations operate within the constraints of limited budgets and resources that rarely have the spare capacity required to deliver strategic or project services.
Identifying ways to reduce service risk by complementing in-house skills in a manner that ensures a transfer of knowledge are critical to successfully delivering business services. Building moves are classic times to revisit the suitability of your existing enterprise architecture, service delivery models and cost models.
To see how TSA can assist your organisation with professional project management and IT services contact TSA on (08) 9202 1994 or email info@tsacorporation.com.