A word from The Boss

“In a time of crises, every decision counts!”

Welcome to our 2021 Summer newsletter

In this edition, we share ERA Water’s client success story, introduce some new Wantoks who have joined the Mipela team recently, present another X-InFocus tech tips and update of our teams’ activities in connecting people with information.

To open I would like to introduce the following new team members in our Products team, Umair Hassan as Software Engineer and an old hand, Shane Brown as one of Senior Software Engineers, back for his second time at Mipela. It also gives me great pleasure to welcome our recent new clients that include BHP Mitsubishi Alliance, Captains Mountain Wind Farm, Eastern Region Alliance, Lend Lease Retirement Living, Service Stream and Valmec to the extended Mipela family.

Reflecting on 2021 has reinforced for me personally what we missed and what we could do without, but has helped to remind what we value is our time. Now more than ever, business decisions carry a lot of weight. The need to be able to be responsive, reliable, repeatable, in our day-to-day activities has never been greater. In order to make the most of your data and ensure you are taking actions that will benefit your business, you must evolve your decision making processes. For our teams internally at Mipela we have been focused on our “Kamapim” (to start, to reveal, to improve and to develop) continuous improvement project to eliminate the complexity and manual processes across our teams. Starting at the heart of our business with Support in this last quarter to become more efficient and proactive so we can add more value in delivering to our Clients. This has included alignment of Support processes with ITIL change control and incident management to align with Category A (Urgent Incidents, Faults and Issues), B (Fundamental Enhancements and Complex changes) and C (Standard Low risk changes, software updates and maintenance) support requests delivered by our Services (Solution\Support\Product) Teams has seen us half our support request cue by sharing the load.

To close I would like to acknowledge two very special teammates for their recent years of service milestone. Craig Williams our Products Team Architect and X-Info Suite guru recently celebrated nineteen years of service. Justin Fielke, who most of your will know having undertaken most roles in the business and looks after our Cloud platform that host the X-Info Suite, passed eighteen years of service. We take pride in your achievements and commitment as Wantoks to be emulated, thank you.

On behalf of the Mipela team thank you for your trust and support throughout 2021. I wish you ‘Compliments of the Season’, safe travels to wherever you might be with family and friends, best wishes for a rewarding and successful New Year which we look forward to with excitement and confidence, stay safe!

Stakeholder management and a global wind energy company

Global wind energy company, Vestas, commenced using Mipela’s stakeholder management solutions for the Winterbourne Wind Farm project in New South Wales. Whilst this project moves through the permitting phase, Vestas relies on X-Info Suite for capturing stakeholder interactions, managing community engagement, and tracking contract payment obligations.

Vestas recently engaged Mipela to provide stakeholder management software for another development project, the Captains Mountain Wind Farm in South East Queensland. Work has also commenced to roll out more Mipela stakeholder management software for additional wind development projects.

What’s New? Product Update

Version 6.3 of X-Info Connect and X-Info WebConnect will become available from 10 January 2022. Here’s what’s included:

Set Measure Distance Units

Units for the Measure Distance in a map function can be configured, either as a default setting or changed by Users within the map user interface. A range of metric and imperial units are available for distance and area.

Search by Coordinate

The address search tool within a map provides the ability to find a location by a coordinate value. The coordinates are required to be in latitude/longitude format, separated by a comma, eg. -27.4521, 153.0375. When a match is found the location will be displayed in the map.

Highlight Labels in Map

Label style configuration in a map has been enhanced with highlighting to display clear, distinguishable labels. A highlight colour can be selected for the label definition of any spatial dataset.

Express Navigation

Search activities in X-Info WebConnect have been enhanced to include navigation configuration which allows finding specific data within search results. The navigation setting allows a field to be defined for express searching of data explicit to the search results.

ESRI Rest Services – InConn

A new InConn type has been added to the import function to allow ESRI REST Services to be imported into a Connection.

Create and Send Bulk Emails or Correspondence

This feature enables workflow – from start to finish – to search and select one or many contacts, review and edit details that have been predefined from a template or email, using a rich text editor and preview the correspondence before sending or saving. A configurable communication is also automatically created that record the email or correspondence. This functionality will be supported in X-Info WebConnect in v6.4.

ERA Water automates its asset protection with X-Info DBYD suite

Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide is being delivered by the Eastern Region Alliance (ERA); an alliance of the six councils in Metropolitan Adelaide’s eastern suburbs. The following three councils are directly involved in the planning and delivery of the project:

• City of Burnside
• City of Norwood Payneham and St Peters
• Town of Walkerville

Easter Regional Alliance Water’s (ERA Water) 49 kilometre pipe network is reducing the reliance of potable water from the Murray River for irrigation.

ERA Water’s infrastructure captures storm water flowing down Third and Fourth creeks in Adelaide. This captured water goes through a treatment process and is stored during the winter months. In summer this stored and filtered water is distributed through the ERA Water pipe network to parks and reserves.

This drought proofs Adelaide’s eastern suburbs by supplying an alternate source of water supply to participating Councils and provides a cost effective alternate to SA Water.

We are proud at Mipela to care for and protect ERA Water’s pipe network with X-Info DBYD suite.

General Manager, Wally Iasiello said, “I was pleased with the support Mipela was able to provide in implementing an automated response system for our DBYD enquiries.”

More information on this interesting water conservation project can be found here.

Did you know?

Mipela are continuously looking at ways of improving how we do business. We recently automated our standard monthly and quarterly reports to clients. This represents a cost saving for clients because no time is now spent collating and preparing the reports. X-Info Suite automatically prepares and emails the reports.

Product Focus

Engagement and consultation is vital to the success of any project, whether you are dealing with internal or external stakeholders.

Stakeholder management requires organised data to simplify the process of efficiently managing interactions and communications, identify issues and opportunities earlier – rather an later – in order to effectively manage your social license to operate.

X-Info Stakeholder Management provides the tools for effective stakeholder management, specifically tailored to the energy and infrastructure sector.

Users can manage tasks, find information, track interactions, find, analyse and report on their data.

If you’d like to find out more, check out the info on our website or contact our Client Success team.

Something GISsy – 90% of users just want a map

Most GIS Specialists have heard the saying “90% of GIS users just want a map”. So keep it simple: assuming your data is good, and you understand the requirements to build a map. Now what? How do you get it to the user?

Ignoring paper (due to cost, environmental unfriendly), lets look at digital delivery. These days nearly all users have mobile phones. Internationally, mobile Internet traffic sits at 54%. In Australia this is lower at 39%.

Lets see what trends there are regarding internet searches:

Well, at least maps are useful (according to the 6,770 million search results shown above). We have confirmed our opening statement “90% of GIS Users just want a map”. The technology or delivery service is not important to the users – we just need to get the map to them.

So, what about using a mobile app? The Top 10 Apps by Download  in 2020 (below) suggest that most users are more interested in Communication and Social media.

But looking at Travel Apps (below) we see Google Maps and Google Earth ranked at 2 + 3  respectively.

Summary

DELIVERY: Internet sites are ahead of mobile apps at this stage (6,778 million sites vs 88 million app downloads).

ACCESS : More and more users are using their mobiles, which can use apps and websites. Currently desktops require an emulator or mirroring software to use mobile apps. Microsoft has commenced development of an operating system (Windows 11) which has limited built in Android app support.

Keep it simple – get your maps out there!