A word from the Boss

Crafting a culture to support decision intelligence

Welcome to our Autumn newsletter for 2022!

In this edition, we are excited to release X-Info Connect V6.4, share AGIG and City of Rockingham’s client success stories, introduce some new Wantoks who have joined the Mipela team recently, present another X-InFocus tech tip and update of our teams activities in connecting people with information.

To open I would like to introduce the following new team members, Tina Underwood – Senior Solution Specialist, David Gooding – GIS Specialist and Peter Van Duong – Software Engineer in our Products Team. It also gives me great pleasure to welcome our most recent new clients Accel Energy, Bridgewater Projects and Windlab to the extended Mipela family.

We can all be responsive, reliable, repeatable in our day to day activities but for organisations looking to enhance efficiency we need better decision making processes. Nowadays, decisions have more wide ranging effects on the business. And decisions can be fuelled by data in a way they’ve never been fuelled before. How to craft a culture to support decision intelligence:

• Start from the top with data-driven decision-making leadership and be patient, creating a data driven culture takes time
• Encourage and empower team members with a data-driven mindset to collaborate across internal teams, departments, and business units
• Select the right tools for you and your business needs to ensure you have traceability of the quality of your data
• Focus on analytics to gain actionable insights to build self-assurance into decision-making
• Make data-driven decisions by aligning with business goals, strategic plans and monitor the effectiveness

In a future where data is constantly flowing, organisations that harness it to drive decision making will have a competitive advantage. By creating a culture that values the importance of data and utilising tools that allow them to capture and use it efficiently, a business can develop better strategies for success. Please contact our Client Success team to find out more.

To close, our thoughts are with everyone in Qld and NSW that have been devastated by the recent rain and flooding events and the fires in WA. From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!

Hayden McDonald
Managing Director

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!

A word from the Boss

Welcome to our 2021 Spring newsletter

Service Enhanced Solutions to accelerate your ESG Program

In this edition we provide a sneak peak of the X-Info Connect v6.2 release, ARTC’s rollout of X-Info DBYD suite and an update on new features available in X-Info Plans Management.

The energy and infrastructure sectors are at a point of inflection. Global events such as COVID-19 and a supply and demand unbalance are providing a challenging environment for companies, management, and technical teams on the frontlines. History proves that technology innovation accelerates when disruptive events occur.

How we look to develop a sustainable environmental, social, governance “license to operate” are each a significant objective. There’s never been a more important time for business to show stakeholders their human side. Not with words, but through actions. By doing the right thing and by delivering positive experiences for their internal and external stakeholders is we believe 100% about people.

Mipela GeoSolutions commercial-off-the-shelf Solution-with-a-Service allows you to focus on the lifecycle of your Service and Assets utilising our innovative X-Info suite technology to capture, measure and report on your daily activities with the view to optimise and continuously improve with technical assurance.

In closing, I would like to acknowledge and welcome one of our most recent new clients ARTC to the Mipela family.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions, let us know what we have done well or not so well in these last three months. It goes without saying that we take nothing for granted and are grateful for your ongoing support. We look forward to continuing our purpose of “connecting people with information”.

From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!

Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director

A word from the boss

Empowering people to identify insights

Welcome to our 2021 Winter newsletter.

The last quarter at Mipela has seen a significant number of our Client Success, Solutions, Support, Product teams working diligently in the Dial Before You Dig space as we prepare with our Clients to cutover to the AADBYDS new Referral Service of the Future on 1 July 2021. I personally would like to thank everyone involved internally at Mipela, externally with our Clients and the Association for the collaborative team effort that has been undertaken to ensure this national service can continue to assist in preventing damage and disruption to Australia’s vast infrastructure networks which provide essential services (power, gas, water, telecommunications) we use every day.

This important project has made me think about how do we make more accurate decisions? We have tasked our teams with constantly improving and innovating different aspects of the organisation, from operational efficiency and client experience to actual performance. The constant hurdle is uncovering where untapped value lies to further innovate. To achieve this, we have tried to create an environment with no judgment or opinions on data. Using data to communicate our progress or highlight where we are missing information, to do our daily activities, helps to uncover areas of real potential and, once rectified, improves the experience for everyone. In doing so we have had to communicate candidly to ensure everyone understands the shared goals we are looking to achieve for a successful project.

June sees US going the extra distance in our 11^th year of supporting the MS Brissie to Bay in our #projectMAD “30 Day Challenge”. Our team of 54 MAD participants from Mipela, Partners (DBYD Qld, ISGQ, MC Global, Powered, Sentanil Systems), Suppliers and Colleagues have committed to a virtual trip of 25,000km (one kilometre for each person in Australia that has MS) around the coastline of Australia #makeeverykmcount raising awareness of Multiple Sclerosis and funds to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for those living with this debilitating disorder. Thank you to everyone who us supported us to date in raising $46,744 is very humbling considering the times we face. For those interested in our journey to date click on this link.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions, let us know what we have done well or not so well in these last three intensive months. Personally, for me it has been a time to be reflective, adaptive and I want to continue to be proactive. It goes without saying that we take nothing for granted and are grateful for your ongoing support.

From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!

Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director

Some days are great, some days are good, some days are bad

With work I am sure you will agree, some days are great, some days are good, some days are bad – we’ve all been there. I thought I would share some thoughts on how to be more productive using technology, with the aim to be working smarter, instead of harder:

• Focus on Systems Instead of Goals – systems are the best way to progress since they reward effort and we can control all the variables
• Track and Measure Output, Not Input – we need to have a sense of direction in those efforts, to know what we are trying to accomplish, a system is an ideal way to control how to achieve an output
• Live by the 80/20 Rule – helps you gain clarity on what is truly important to sustain innovative work
• Automate Repetitive Tasks – means more time to focus on creative and productive work
• Be Data Driven – allows you to focus on the facts and eliminate the emotion and opinions in our day to day decision making processes.

Our recent new clients include Canadian Solar, Goldwind’s Coppabella Wind Farm and Clarke Creek Wind and Solar Farm as well as Veolia’s Springvale Mount Piper Power Station Water Treatment Plant and pipeline to the extended Mipela family.

Going ons at Mipela

In this edition we provide a wrap-up of our recent X-Info User Group meeting in Adelaide and some handy information for X-Info DBYD suite clients on getting the most out of your automated response system. We’ll also look at how renewable projects are utilising X-Info Suite for community engagement, stakeholder and land access management as well as automated contract payments.

I would like to acknowledge and welcome our most recent new clients, City of Greater Dandenong, Canadian Solar, Walcha and Vestas.

Karen Thompson, John Quigley, Neil Aikman and I are looking forward to catching up with existing clients, learning lots and meeting some new people at the 2019 Annual Convention and Exhibition of the APGA: “Infrastructure for the future” in Adelaide 13 – 15 October. Pop by and say hi at Stand 22 to see how we assist our Clients “Catch the Next Wave” use our technology to protect their assets, respond to landholders, construction material traceability, understand operational risks, and target field services by delivering high-quality solutions to support their key operations, projects and stakeholder interactions to consistently operate as productively as possible by doing the right things. Make sure to put your name in the draw for a chance to win a “CoolCabanas” – the worlds best beach sun shelter – that won’t blow away setting you up for the best summer by the surf!

3 proven ways to empower technology

In this article, we share Isaac Regional client success story, a wrap-up of one of our 2019 #projectMAD initiatives to make a difference for those suffering with multiple sclerosis, present  another X-InFocus tech tip and update of our teams activities in connecting people with information.

Successful companies know that IT is not an afterthought—it’s a critical ecosystem supported by a strong team and connected by technology and processes, and it’s all about creating accord between these moving parts.

To empower technology and optimise its role for the delivery of information within an organisation, there are three things leaders must do.

• Operationally deliver relevant data, when and where it’s needed
• Tailor the experience to meet everyone’s needs
• Collaborate in real time to strategically make better decisions, faster.

I wish you all the best in your daily activities and would like to close by welcoming the following new staff Hine Laban Support Team Leader, Michael Short Senior Solutions Specialist and Mohsan Sadiq Project Manager in our Brisbane HQ. Our new clients AEROmetrex, APA Networks, City of Melton, Countrytell, Hunter Water, Isaac Regional Council and Cross Yarra Partnership to the extended Mipela family.

Hayden McDonald
Managing Director

Bringing  together data, systems and people

Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, occurs when an organization uses its own product.This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising. Once in the market, dogfooding demonstrates confidence in the developers’ own products.

Wikipedia

From marketing and sales, to solutions, to support, to products, to admin, to the board, everyone at Mipela truly believe that using the X-Info suite makes them more productive, their work more enjoyable, and their workdays less stressful by connecting our data, systems and people. What is fascinating about the latest release of X-Info WebConnect business process software, we believe that the web browser based Activities are allowing Mipela to:

• Encourage fact-based, decision making
• Empower individuals and teams to be inter-dependent
• Encourage productive use of valuable time and our resources
• Increase trust, accountability, and visibility of completing our daily tasks
• Create a good feedback loop of where we are at, so we can look to continuously improve

This also allows us to test the latest versions of our products in real life usage to validate before it’s released, enabling proactive resolution of potential inconsistency or dependency issues, which is a humbling process.

Working together as a team towards greater success

We believe it takes a great workplace to produce great work. We’ve built a collaborative and people-focused culture that drives our business. We’re all unique, with our own skills, knowledge and personalities, and it’s these differences that allow us to compliment and learn from each other, to support each other, and most importantly it’s what unites us as a company. So it’s with great pleasure we share some insights about Rob Choucroun who was awarded the Mipela GeoSolutions “2015 Justin Fielke Wantok Annual PRIDE Award” by his peers in this issue.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank ElectraNet who recently hosted our inaugural X-Info User Group meeting in Adelaide, and in particular, David Manley, whose passion about his work in community relations and landowner engagement was evident for all those who attended. I believe what sets David apart is his inclusion of his team internally within the business in building their capability and his constant thirst for knowledge on how they are travelling in the industry to share what they are doing internal with peers externally. This is a credit to his leadership style, the company’s commitment to ongoing professional development and their continuous improvement ethos.

Four steps for effective business process improvement

The demand to simplify both informal and formal business processes continues to increase as expectations change, new technologies emerge and competition grows can be addressed by following these four steps:
1) Identify the need for change by reviewing current issues or potential risks which should consider how each process impacts your organisation, resources and stakeholders (employees, customers, partners, suppliers, etc.).
2) Once you have decided which process you are going to improve you can analyse the current procedure to set realistic improvement objectives by answering the following questions:
• What in the process is broken?
• Which steps in the process create roadblocks?
• Which step requires the most time to complete?
• Which step causes the most delays?
• Are there any steps that cause costs/resources to go up?
• Are there any steps that cause quality to go down?
3) It is crucial that management understands the need for change to ensure they will support recommendations.
4) Create an Improvement Strategy that includes what steps in the process are broken, why and how they should be improved and any financial and resource implications.

If you are looking to gain operational efficiency, standardise data capture and business processes, increase visibility of information and business operations or enable collaboration amongst internal and external teams contact us today to discover how the X-Info products can simplify your day to day activities.