Background
In 2020, Transport for NSW (TfNSW) awarded its Sydney Road Assets Performance (SRAP) contracts, as part of a large scope of works across Greater Sydney and Blue Mountains to deliver critical road maintenance and improvement projects. Consultation Manager’s client, Fulton Hogan, was awarded the SRAP Service Provider contract for the River Zone in Sydney – an area comprising of 783 kilometres of roads.
“Roads are our busiest transport network and maintaining them requires a 24/7 focus on performance and listening to our many customers. Our contracted Service Providers need to deliver the best outcomes for the community, with a strong focus on safety, user experience, sustainability and innovation.” – Patricia Bryant, Director Road Contracts, TfNSW
Recently, our team caught up with Nicola Bylmakers, the Customer and Community Manager at Fulton Hogan. At Fulton Hogan, it’s really not about just doing the bare minimum. When dealing with large quantities of requests from a significant area of stakeholders and communities, it can be challenging. But, Nicola knew that Consultation Manager would be a winning solution to enhance flexibility and drive a greater understanding of who these key stakeholders and communities are.
Fulton Hogan’s innovative and unique approach to road and asset maintenance is high level, and they’ve developed an integrated, connected solution to ensure all stakeholders are managed effectively.
An Integrated, Connected Approach
Integrating their Asset Management System, Confirm, with Consultation Manager, was an investment Fulton Hogan made very early on. Nicola knew that having disconnected data is inefficient, especially when you have two separate systems that can’t speak to each other. Fulton Hogan emphasises the benefits of having smart systems in place, so the ability to reduce double-handling and optimise day-to-day practices was essential.
Consultation Manager’s team created a bespoke solution for Fulton Hogan by connecting with Confirm and devising a successful integration between the two platforms. This solution also wasn’t simple as our team had to leverage the APIs of both products to build this unique connection. The result? A bespoke integration that allows Consultation Manager to be a single source of truth of stakeholder interactions and has streamlined Fulton Hogan’s asset management operations.
With every single asset logged in Consultation Manager, Nicola’s team can view any asset on a map and have an instantaneous visual display of work that is being conducted. The ease of having a ‘one-stop-shop’ for their asset management has allowed Nicola to track and assess any hot spots of service requests, and easily see what road surfaces need immediate attention or what could guide future work programs. This continuity of data capture has also allowed the team to easily generate reports when needed.
Ease of Reporting and Sentiment
With the Consultation Manager Dashboard providing a holistic overview of any anomalies or spikes in requests, admin time spent reporting on sifting through data has greatly decreased. This immediate overview also gives a clear indication on any issues that need to be addressed. Plus, each month, Nicola is able to easily export any data and provide TfNSW with effective graphs and visualisations. This has not only been an absolute game-changer to meet the high-quality standards of reporting for TfNSW, but also a huge milestone in staying on top of stakeholder sentiment.
Sentiment is a big thing at Fulton Hogan. On any one day, Nicola’s team can receive ministerial inquiries, GIPA requests, general feedback, complaints, or compliments… it’s a lot. So having a platform like Consultation Manager that helps define a customised list of sentiment options really streamlines that process and allows the team to quickly identify the types of requests coming through. This has also allowed the team to respond to these types of requests appropriately and track any outgoing communications through different record types.
The flexibility of Consultation Manager has also ensured that clear definitions and descriptions are attached to these record types. This has been incredibly helpful for Nicola’s team, as everyone is on the same page and their trust in data entry is increased due to the clarity surrounding their record types. However, it’s also very easy to adapt when needed, and the evolving nature of their platform can be updated and changed when needed.
An Ongoing Partnership – What’s Next?
“It’s definitely not just a ‘let’s set it up’, we want to improve it as we go along and see if there’s any synergies or ways we can make it more efficient for people using it, so that’s good. It’s constantly evolving.”
With all data consolidated in Consultation Manager, Nicola’s team was soon brainstorming numerous ideas and options to further enhance this integration. Our team at Consultation Manager is extremely responsive to all ideas and improvements and is always eager to tackle projects that will further help our clients’ operations. Nicola confirmed that “Up to this day, most things have been possible. There hasn’t really been anything that’s not completely impossible to do… there’s always some option available for us to be able to implement what we want to do”.
Going above and beyond for people in the River Zone community is a key driver for these next steps, and Nicola is so excited that she has established a seamless workflow between her team in the office and the team in the field completing tasks. Our team is also excited to continue to work with Fulton Hogan in developing a stakeholder management solution that establishes richer connections for all communities involved in the area.
“So for us, our philosophy is really being efficient as possible in our response. Keeping people updated and making people feel acknowledged. This can often turn something that’s a request or a complaint about something into a compliment, and so that’s really our philosophy when it comes to engagement in this space. We actually care.”
