Shooting for the Stars: Demystifying Service Levels

Abstract

Gympie Regional Council (GRC) manages, maintains and operates an extensive asset portfolio with limited financial resources. To ensure service delivery is sustainable and effective GRC needs to ensure services are provided in a fit for purpose manner, prioritising capital and operational investments in a considered and consistent manner. Historically Council has not had complete Levels of Service defined for all asset classes. However, to assist guiding investment decisions, GRC is in the process of reviewing its asset management approach, seeking to define levels of service using a simple and streamlined framework. This approach focuses on levels of service from an asset management perspective as a whole as opposed to customer service and technical service standards. GRC recognises not every asset is of equal importance. It is imperative for Council to understand which assets are valued by the community as a whole, which assets are critical to service delivery and those which have a high consequence of failure to inform investment decisions. GRC is seeking to achieve this by defining levels of service in terms of a ‘Star Rating’ approach, similar in principle to that used for classifying hotels. The approach adopted across Council defines the levels of service in terms of a 5-star rating system, similar in principle to that used for classifying hotels. This strategy achieves a consistent language, that is more easily understood and relatable to the community allowing Council to have meaningful conversations regarding service levels without the traditional complexity that often losses the audience. Applying this framework, 5-star rated assets are assets that are very important to the community and have a high profile, high usage, or have a high-risk rating if they fail. The commensurate expectation of the community is that a 5-star asset is always presented in top condition and can support a high level of service. A 5-star asset requires a high frequency of inspections and a proactive level of maintenance to ensure the asset remains at a 5-star rating. At the other end of the spectrum, 1-star assets which are not very critical or important to the community would receive less frequent inspections, receive minimal investment to reduce whole of life expenditure. Engagement with all levels within the organisation and broad community consultation will be required to realise these benefits. This paper seeks to outline Council’s adopted draft ‘Star Ratings’ for asset classes to-date and how this has informed the development of current Asset Management Plans.