Abstract Manager

While consistency is the key to any operations, continuous improvement is a mandatory process to keep pace with the exigencies and changes of municipal work. This presentation tracks the continuous improvement story of a maintenance team at the city of Edmonton over a period of 4 years and highlights the importance and key role played by field staff in implementing incremental changes. 

In 2019, the team would have been characterized as isolated, reactive, paper based, and traditional. It maintained a fairly consistent inventory but had no control interaction with capital projects and no record keeping of any inspections.

In 2023, The Auxiliary Maintenance team would be described as, integrated, forward thinking, and data driven. Inspections and work orders are completed digitally and real time data is shared across the organization. 

We will first explore the challenges encountered with traditional corporate support systems including, existing inventory and database system shortcomings, current technology implementation, designated corporate support groups.

We will then explore the keys to the successful continuous improvement steps in this team including: alignment with the corporate vision, sharp understanding of their role in the larger picture, and field staff at the center of the changes. In particular, we will take a closer look at the transformation of the inspection program from following a paper based list of assets with no record keeping, to tracking real time inspections based on a set of standards using an APP that can then be searched, tracked and updated by various stakeholders. Once the need was clearly understood by the field staff, the changes were made internally and seamlessly without the use of corporate funding, or the launch of a digital transformation project.

The characteristics this team has developed allows them to look forward to the next incremental steps, and makes them a preferred option for pilot projects and corporate innovation. The lessons from this case study can be applied to any operations team, but perhaps should cause us to rethink the very structures of our operational programs.