A word from the Boss

“The Power of Communication” – see your world from a new perspective

Welcome to our 2020 Spring newsletter

In this edition, we provide a sneak peek of the X-Info Connect V6 release, our most recent client success story and recognise two of our long term staff on their years of Service. We would also like to welcome newest client, Archipelago.

It’s that time of year again, we are excited as ever to be involved in this month’s 2020 Australian Pipeline Gas Association Annual Convention moving to a virtual format for the first time (run in five sessions of about two hours each over five days) from Monday 19 October to Friday 23 October focusing on this year’s theme of “New Decade: New Perspective.”

I am sure you will all agree 2020 has served as a real time experiment in the technology space, accelerating existing trends and disrupting today’s reality in everything that we do. We believe success in the New Decade requires New Perspective in how we Communicate and Engage with people. If you have large volumes of data, looking to improve the quality of information your teams need on a day to day basis or interested in how to make more accurate decisions, please contact us. We will be showcasing the hugely anticipated release of X-Info Connect v6.0, empowering people to identify insights reliably, increase the speed of communicating tasks and outcomes, allowing you to see your world from a new perspective.

To close I would like to acknowledge two very special Wantoks for their recent years of service milestones. Simon Bobeldyk leads The Brains Trust, our software development team who are responsible for making X-Info suite what it is today, recently celebrated nine years of service. Simon we cannot thank you enough for the support you offer us ALL. Congratulations to Alana O’Connor on six years of Service at Mipela GeoSolutions. Your enthusiasm for assisting our clients to bring their ideas to life using our X-Info suite of software is exceptional and thank you for always looking to go that extra step to deliver on what we promise.

From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!

Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director

A word from the boss

“Doing the right thing”

With COVID19 restrictions lifting around Australia, our teams are still working from home and recently been heading into the office one day a week for product planning, reviewing work in progress, solution implementation projects, system efficiencies, lesson learnt sessions and the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues has been greatly appreciated by all. When decisions are made with respect to any of these initiatives and their impact, we will communicate them as soon as we can.

June saw US going the extra distance in our 10th year of supporting the MS Brissie to Bay in our #projectMAD “30 for 30 Challenge”. Our team of 57 MAD participants from Mipela, Partners (DBYD Qld, ISGQ, MC Global, Powered, Sentanil Systems), Suppliers and Colleagues committed to a virtual trip of 25,760km around the coastline of Australia #makeeverykmcount raising awareness of Multiple Sclerosis and funds to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for those living with this debilitating disorder. To check on how they went, read the article further through this newsletter.

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.

Something GISsy

False Colour Leads to the Truth About Burnt Areas

Remote sensing was used to fight and recover from the recent bushfires on Kangaroo Island.

Firefighters, farmers and ecologists needed up to date burnt area maps to plan firebreaks and protect animals. Boone Law (Adelaide University), responded by using free, multi-spectral Sentinel 2 satellite imagery. This has a 5-day revisit frequency and 7-hour preparation delay.

On receiving new imagery, Law required an additional two hours of processing to update a false colour map, using the Normalised Burn Ratio algorithm to assign red shades to burnt areas.

Spatial science fights fires in near real time.

Source: Spatial Points, accessed 11/6/20, http://www.spatialpoints.com/2020/02/04/visualising-burnt-area-impacts-on-kangaroo-island-with-satellite-imagery/

A word from the boss

These are challenging times and things are changing rapidly. As a business we are taking on the challenges of COVID-19 just as we would our purpose of connecting people with information.

Mipela GeoSolutions has given us many things. Persistence, Team and Fun and it has also given us you – an incredible community and without you, there is no US! Whatever your current predicament, we wish you the strength to get through this.

Our priorities continue to be the safety, wellbeing and health of our team, the communities we live in and to ensure the continuity of our operations, support and essential services for our clients.

Our approach will be to follow the Health authorities, official Government advice and recommendations and exercise caution and common sense to take measures to minimise spread, protect everyone’s health and maintain operations as we work our way through it and the situation improves.

For US it’s business as usual, with all of our staff working from home. Our teams, suppliers and valued partners are operational with multiple contingencies in place to deal with the changing circumstances. Overall, we anticipate the nature of engaging support (email, phone and ticketing) and the capacity of support, along with our hosting services to remain unchanged. We’re also using the time to continue our push of the product development of our X-Info Suite, innovative solutions and iron out any kinks in our client experience so we can come back stronger when the challenges that we all currently face subside.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions, queries, concerns or just want a chat. Keeping up our communications in these times will be critically important. We are here for you always and grateful for your ongoing support.

From all the team at Mipela GeoSolutions, stay safe!

A word from the Boss

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.

A word from the Boss

Welcome to our Spring newsletter for 2019!

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!

Hayden McDonald
Founder and Managing Director

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.

Simplifying how work gets done

With the next generation development of the X-Info suite underway, our measure of success and in turn our clients depends on our ability to change. The instability caused by globalisation and advance of new disruptive technology guarantees only the adaptable will survive.

Success in the digital age is not only defined by the formulation of good ideas but the ability to implement those ideas in a rapidly shifting environment. Technology is changing the world at an ever increasing speed. Disruptive business models (Airbnb, Netflix, Uber) are leaving established organisations in the wake of their more agile competitors. Change can only occur when people, process and technology are aligned/connected.

We need to empower people to alter their ongoing operations at the point they capture data while delivering outcomes in a dynamic environment. This is where changing business environments, ERP implementations, reorganisations and mergers, changing product and service offerings, changing laws and regulations are constantly in flux.

But we can’t do it alone. With our suppliers, our partners, our people, our clients’ teams, together we are committed to the continuous process of analysing, designing and monitoring our activities to perform tasks efficiently and effectively and look forward to sharing more on this in future newsletters.

Solving our clients’ needs

In this edition we provide a wrap up of the first Oceanic Damage Prevention Conference (ODPC) on the Gold Coast, our recent X-Info User Group meeting in Brisbane, a sneak peak of the X-Info Aware Version 2.4 release,  the development of the Australian Safety Management Study under AS2885 and Linbeck Contractor’s use of our X-Info Plans Management.

I would like to acknowledge and welcome our most recent new clients, Transport Canberra and City Services and Yarra City Council. August 2018 recently marked the 21st anniversary of the company’s founding. A warm thank you to all of our team (past and present), suppliers, partners and clients for your continued support.

In closing, Dean Howell, John Quigley and I really enjoyed catching up with our existing clients, learning lots and meeting some new people at the 2018 Annual Convention and Exhibition of the APGA: celebrating “Australia’s Pipelines: 50 years of safe and reliable delivery of energy and water” in Darwin 8 – 11 September. Congratulations to Stephen Ohl on winning the Scrabble Luxury Edition!

Hayden McDonald
Founder & Managing Director