‘Asset management’ and ‘sustainability’ are words frequently heard in Local Government and public works organisations throughout Australia. The last decade has seen a general awakening on the accurate measurement of assets, and alongside this we have seen the rise of associated GIS technology and software to assist industry in attaining these critical goals and objectives.
Spatial technologies are being refined and accurate, reliable and complete ‘as constructed’ information is critical for daily operational works and asset management forecasting alike.
It is still common practise for the development industry to create spatial information as digits and to present these digits on paper before submitting them to councils, that then have to recapture them in digital form.
This is of course, what they have been asked to do, but the result is an unnecessary duplication of effort, and opens up the potential for translation errors.
Asset design as constructed
Councils with well developed GISystems and healthy interoperability between major business systems enjoy the benefits of situational awareness and tighter decision cycles. Over the past decade, measurement systems, GISystems and asset management systems have all matured considerably. Nonetheless, we find ourselves returning to the old form of robust data models and agreed methods of operation to form our success. Thus standards, protocols and specifications remain the cornerstones of advancement.
Yet, if Local Governments are not compelled by legislation to conform to a standard, they still find it very difficult to align with one another. A multitude of systems, differing political priorities, and a broad spectrum of opinion makes consensus very difficult on matters of fine detail. These are harsh conditions under which to grow a specification.
This was the core problem hoping to be solved by the South-East Queensland councils and, together with the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia Queensland (PWEAQ) the vision that was commenced by them has continued to mature: to precisely define the data that their council requires; specify the CAD format in which it is to be delivered; and distribute customised CAD tools with which to capture it.
IPWEAQ ADAC Consortium
The IPWEAQ ADAC Consortium has further developed this model, bringing their collective experience and a measure of goodwill. Many different classes of assets have been exhaustively debated and described, and the ADAC model has now been developed into an XML definition file to allow other CAD and GIS software vendors to build support for the ADAC process directly into their own products.
ADAC for everyone!
The restrictions on enumerated data types from the existing ADAC V4.0.0 schema has now been relaxed to create a base schema that is more easily adapted to interstate or international variations in nomenclature and is now being implemented.
Why adopt?
There are many benefits for a council adopting the ADAC process. Basically, all asset information is presented to council in one format with the use of authoring tools from software developers. This facilitates ease of ingestion into council systems and a more refined process to disperse information throughout council departments.
The provided tools give fast and accurate automated notification of mistakes or double ups in information submitted to council, resulting in faster notification to the private sector for any corrections required. All of this comes with more streamlined processing at the time of design submission and a reduction in project approval, sometimes from months to weeks.
Like to know more
Visit www.adac.com.au
*Adam Hain is the Technical Products Development Officer, Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia Queensland Division Inc (IPWEAQ). Adam acts on behalf of IPWEAQ as the facilitator for the ADAC Consortium. You can contact him at ahain@ipweaq.asn.au.
