Development Update: X-Info Connect version 8.0

Development is underway and our Products team will be busy next year working on providing a new solution of our software. X-Info Connect 8.0 aims to provide solutions to clients using simple workflows to connect and exchange information.

There are many key objectives to meet with this version that will provide enhanced performance, more efficient storage of data, dynamic integration, flexibility in database and process design, and enhanced security – all delivered in a modern application using current technology.

A significant transformation of the architecture will allow migration of previous versions of databases to provide seamless transfer to new solutions for clients.

Reporting Stakeholder Information to the Regulators

Beach Energy is an ASX listed, oil and natural gas, exploration and production company headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1961, Beach have operated and non-operated, onshore and offshore, oil and natural gas production from five producing basins across Australia and New Zealand.

Beach recognises its intrinsic role in supporting communities, by actively contributing to sustainable environments and the health, safety and wellbeing of the people living in the areas where it operates. Its community investment strategy focuses on three key areas; education, environment and health, safety and wellbeing.

Beach’s community relations team were looking for a way to capture, manage and measure its stakeholder management to gain a better level of understanding of stakeholder communications across the business. Enter Stage Left – Mipela. The team from Mipela have worked with the Beach team to deliver a stakeholder management solution to assist them with community engagement and consultation processes, with consideration made to land access requirements.

As part of the consultative process, it was also identified that the following functionality could be included in the proposed solution, using X-Info Suite:

• Stakeholder engagement including agreements, grievances, commitments, communications, records management and reporting
• Community investment and grants management including contracts, correspondence and reporting
• Landholder land access including notice of entry, payments and reports.

Both teams recognised the best way to work together was to adopt a continuous improvement approach to the solution – delivering more and more functionality as the solution matures. Whilst some enhancements have been simple configuration changes to workflows, others have been major feature developments, which are now available to other Mipela clients.

Being able to create bulk emails, correspondence and SMS messages against multiple stakeholder contacts simultaneously has demonstrated a huge amount of value to the Beach community relations team. The consistency of messaging and significant reduction in time taken to issue information means the community relations team can get on with other tasks.

“We can now quickly distribute communications to a targeted list of stakeholders and have it automatically recorded as an engagement in X-Info Suite for future reporting purposes,” said Linda French, Group Manager Social Performance and Community at Beach Energy.

Recent industry highlights of regulatory reporting compliance becoming more and more important, has lead to the development of significantly improved reporting from X-Info Suite. Being able to automatically create a report that demonstrates stakeholder engagement from both detail of each email, call, text and in a tabular engagement log summary at the push of a button has been a real advancement for Beach.

“To satisfy different regulatory requirements, we must be able to provide details of our stakeholder and landholder engagement – including extracts of all emails and summaries of engagement,” said French.

“Being able to capture, then create a report that details engagement with relevant persons from a single system like X-Info Suite is a powerful tool when you are accountable to present evidence to regulators. This engagement report has saved a phenomenal amount of manual handling. I am absolutely thrilled with this new functionality,” French added.

Both teams will continue to improve on the value that X-Info Suite delivers to Beach.

What integration with SPEAR means to Jemena

In the version 6.5 release of X-Info Connect a few months ago, we introduced an integration between X-Info Connect with the Victoria Government SPEAR System.

SPEAR is an online system that allows subdivision planning permits, certification applications and other land administration dealings to be compiled, lodged, managed, referred, approved and tracked online. Complete end to end workflows are built into SPEAR allowing applications to be lodged online with Land Use Victoria for registration.

As a Referral Authority, Jemena uses SPEAR to receive and respond to Council referrals in the planning and subdivision application process.

X-Info Connect has been configured to integrate with the SPEAR system via an API and connector to capture records of online applications for plans of subdivision.

Gail Ervine, Subdivisional Officer, Strategy & Commercial – Electrical Distribution at Jemena relies heavily on regularly receiving information to support plans of subdivision within the Jemena Electricity Distribution network using X-Info Connect.

Previously Gail would manually update this information into their subdivision solution, X-Info Connect. The information is now automatically fed into X-Info Connect from SPEAR via an API and a connector on an hourly basis or pushed import, as required. Since the release of this new functionality, reviewing subdivisions has become much more timely and efficient with automation reducing input errors.

“Not only has the time taken to manage applications reduced dramatically, there is also no room for human error or omissions.” said Gail.

Jemena plans in taking this functionality into other areas of its operations.

Stakeholder management – the answer is blowing in the wind

Vestas Australian Wind Technology – the local arm of Danish wind energy giant Vestas – recently engaged Mipela to provide a stakeholder management platform for a new wind farm project that they are developing near Walcha in NSW.  The project, known as the Winterbourne Wind Farm, has a potential capacity of 700MW which would make it the largest wind farm in Australia if it were built today.

Vestas also wanted a stakeholder management platform that could be scaled to future development projects.  Mipela implemented X-Info Suite to provide a web based solution that can manage stakeholders, property information, agreements and associated payments as well as associated communications. Users are also able to capture data in the field using the mobile data capture app, X-Info Aware.

While the conversations with landholders in the region had been underway for the past fifteen years, the engagement had been quite informal. Owner names were tracked on a simple spreadsheet and Google Earth was used for the property and asset locations. Now all information, including the historical information already captured, is available from one source in X-Info Suite and can be used for several different purposes including bulk communications, geospatially capturing data and payments.

Project Director of the Winterbourne Wind Farm, Doug Landfear said, “The team at Mipela have provided us with a best practice stakeholder management system that has the flexibility to provide us with a comprehensive solution into the future as this project matures. Their expertise and experience in delivering the solution made the process simple – we were able to start working with the software in a matter of weeks. The Mipela Solution Specialist was insanely efficient and made the project a breeze.”

One other interesting dimension is that Vestas purchased the project from Walcha Energy who is developing other renewable energy projects in the Walcha area.  Walcha Energy is also using X-Info Suite to manage its stakeholder management across these other assets.

Property Information Service made easy

Since its inception, Queensland Urban Utilities had primarily sourced its property information from Brisbane City Council’s Coreland application. On 30 June 2016, this arrangement ceased and an alternative data source was required. Queensland Urban Utilities’ area of interest covers five Councils – Brisbane, Somerset, Ipswich, Lockyer Valley and the Scenic Rim Regional Councils – and the solution needed to align the process of acquiring property data across all regions.

Queensland Urban Utilities selected Mipela to provide a suitable Property Information Service solution that would support business functions including; billing, managing customer enquiries (via the Contact Centre, mail, email and social media), maintenance operations for meter reading, and spatial analysis for asset capital works and operational planning. The objectives of the project were to reduce costs associated with acquiring property data, improve accuracy of the data, and align acquisition of the data to enable a more efficient use of data within the business.

The Property Information Service was designed using Mipela’s X-Info Connect, with X-Info WebConnect providing a browser based lookup interface for staff to reference both historical and the ongoing new data.

Property, ownership, valuation and geographic information from Department of Natural Resources and Mines is combined into a database within X-Info Connect and automatically updated daily, with the service checking each data source for any changes. This data is then automatically delivered from X-Info Connect for consumption by the business for various purposes.

The Property Information Service has been established with future requirements in mind, as additional Queensland Urban Utilities applications come to require access to property information. This cloud based solution is fully managed by Mipela, with no administrative requirements by Queensland Urban Utilities staff.

Now, large volumes of data and updates are received and automatically processed for delivery by X-Info Connect into the Property Information Service. The integrity of the data has significantly increased and there is an increased level of comfort in the data being received. Queensland Urban Utilities has provided the business with a cost saving, reliable source of property information that can be used by various areas of the business in a consumable format.

Perfect match: X-Info Connect and Maintenance Connection

First it was X-Info Maps integration with Maintenance Connection, now Mipela GeoSolutions has found the perfect addition by enabling X-Info Connect to also communicate with Maintenance Connection.

This new pairing enables users to visualise assets through embedded GIS functionality, allowing users to:

• Automatically create WorkOrders and Assets through the mapping interface within Maintenance Connection
• Automatically create a WorkOrder based on a trigger from X-Info Connect.

Example

When a new DBYD Works Management request is created, a WorkOrder can be automatically generated for that request within Maintenance Connection. The resulting WorkOrder number can then be populated back to X-Info Connect and linked to Maintenance Connection to enable other automated or adhoc actions such as emailing, populating GIS files or adding communications. The request and WorkOrder can also be visualised on a map (in either X-Info Connect or Maintenance Connection) and interrogated through tools in the X-Info Maps interface.

Through this integration, workflow is improved between the two systems resulting in users having a seamless experience to achieve the business objectives of managing their assets and stakeholders.

Benefit

• Automates WorkOrder creation for Affected DBYD responses in Maintenance Connection
• Automates status of open and closed DBYD WorkOrders back into X-Info Connect
• Eliminates manual intervention of allocated WorkOrders to appropriate resources
• Eliminates forwarding Affected DBYD response emails to allocated resource for interpretation
• DBYD and associated WorkOrder statistics can be tracked and reported on.

Overall, this new workflow automation software functionality improves the automatic generation of WorkOrders rising from DBYD enquiries, or any other Works request initiating business data, and further integrates the automation between X-Info Connect, X-Info Maps and Maintenance Connection.