Asset Management Case Studies

Easy Access for Ports Authority

Organisation:	Flinders Ports
Industry:	Shipping
Location:	Adelaide, Australia

Flinders Ports

When the State of South Australia announced its intention to privatise the South
Australian Ports Corporation, Flinders Ports Pty Ltd was announced as the preferred bidder and eventually acquired this business.

In addition to the acquisition of the port infrastructure, Flinders Ports also acquired a 99-year land lease and port operating license for the Port of Adelaide and the six regional ports of Port Lincoln, PortPirie, Port Giles, Klein Point, Thevenard and Wallaroo. Flinders Ports is Quality Assured, and is an Environmentally and OH&S accredited organisation.

The Issue

Flinders Ports had asset and maintenance records in a variety of separate systems, many of which were built around spreadsheet software and based on particular classes of assets.

The number and variety of systems made it difficult to obtain consolidated reporting across various divisions of the organization, creating a significant administrative overhead with day-to-day asset and maintenance management. The IT Department within Flinders Ports was faced with the administrative burden of supporting these disparate systems that they knew about, let alone all of the spreadsheets and databases they were still to uncover.

The Solution

Following a competitive bid process, Hardcat was selected as the preferred vendor and implemented a solution based upon the Hardcat Asset Management, Service Desk, Maintenance Management and Web Interface modules.
”Hardcat’s ability to provide a robust, flexible platform that could be accessed remotely through an easy-to-use web were key elements in the selection process,” commented Lee Kolokas – Project Engineer, Flinders Ports.


The solution was designed to allow access to a wide range of users, ranging from general staff wishing to look up asset information or report a possible maintenance issue, through to management requiring status information.

Flinders Ports determined that the preferred interface for all of its users would be a web browser. Hardcat provided a corporate presentation layer to meet Flinders Ports' unique requirements, including ‘Pilot Vessels’ functionality. This interface allows critical information on engine operating hours and various other calibration readings to be easily logged and subsequently tracked.

The solution features powerful entity-based security, ‘domain control’, to ensure users see only the data that is relevant to them or their business unit, while allowing consolidated reporting across all areas for Flinders Ports management.

Flinders Ports has made extensive use of the Hardcat ‘presets’ functionality, allowing them to capture specific attributes of different types of plant and machinery.

The Benefits

Flinders Ports now enjoys the benefits of a comprehensive asset register solution with highly detailed tracking of all maintenance and repair work.

All recurring maintenance job types have been set up as templates in the Hardcat database, allowing for automatic generation of work orders based on last asset service date (or operating hours) as well as forecasting of future works.

Maintenance staff are now able to see all scheduled tasks and repair jobs in a single, easy-to-use interface. They can also quickly and efficiently update these records with all actions taken, calibrations, and any other important information.

A detailed maintenance history is then built up for each asset, and prior maintenance and repair works are easily viewed in the asset history.

“The Hardcat solution allows us to track a history of running hours and calibration readings as well as ongoing scheduled and unscheduled maintenance,” said Lee Kolokas – Project Engineer, Flinders Ports.

The efficiencies allowed by the Hardcat solution have been considerable, and the application is highly popular with its broad user base. Users have been quick to embrace the use of the system, and the database is being consistently updated with detailed, accurate data.

The support burden of the IT department has been reduced by offering a single maintenance management solution to users, engineers and management. In addition, OH&S activity has also been tracked through the same interface.

Implementation of the Hardcat solution has allowed Flinders Ports to realise a powerful, centralised fixed asset and maintenance management solution and has promoted greater efficiencies in the ongoing management of Flinders Ports assets.