National Infrastructure & Facilities Management

Project Overview

Telstra awarded Silcar – as part of a joint venture, and then singularly – the operate and maintain contract for their Network Infrastructure Maintenance requirements located Australia wide.

Silcar provides these services to metropolitan, regional and remote sites, 24 hours per day, seven days a week. These services include the ability to successfully mitigate risks to the Telstra network ensuring a more reliable service to Telstra's customers, and also 1st response reactive maintenance and alarm monitoring as part of Telstra’s Global Operations Centre (GOC) monitoring centre.

Project Challenges

Our client required a sophisticated maintenance and fault provisioning service to be delivered, wherever Telstra assets were deployed, Australia-wide, in both metro and rural locations.

Silcar worked with Telstra to ensure all client needs were understood and met, within strict KPI timelines, while also recommending pro-active preventative asset and risk management strategies to ensure the national network remained operational while also keeping a tight rein on maintenance budgets.

Silcar was tasked to provide facilities management and servicing (such as heating ventilation and air conditioning), building and plant mechanical services, property management of Telstra sites, control systems including security, safety systems (fire, smoke, gas detection and monitoring), cleaning and grounds maintenance, emergency planning and contingency management, technical maintenance, breakdown and preventative maintenance and corrective action to support the telecommunications power systems (AC, DC and solar equipment). Servicing AC electrical systems, emergency power generation supply, provision of uninterrupted power systems/supplies and energy management, climate control and backup systems were also part of the scope.

Silcar Solutions

Through our close working relationship, Silcar was able to provide additional outcomes to Telstra which ultimately delivered additional benefits to the business.

These included uncovering additional ways to add value to Telstra and its network; a more co-operative, efficient provision of services Australia-wide; a capability to jointly review with Telstra all works and actively improve service delivery through a unique partnership approach; and the opportunity for innovation and stretch benchmarks on Telstra’s behalf.

Also throughout the contract, Silcar has acquired great expertise in protecting customer services during the Mass Disruption season – from late spring to autumn – when storms, floods, heat and fires threaten vast areas of Telstra’s network right across the continent.

In March 2010, tropical cyclone Ului crossed the Queensland coast near Mackay, and immediately affected the mains power supply in a large part of central Queensland.  Over 200 Telstra sites had no mains power for several days.

Silcar co-ordinated the response to the event, in consultation with Telstra’s Major Incident Management team at the Telstra GOC.  During the event, 37 Silcar field technicians were deployed with additional Silcar technicians flown in from Victoria and NSW. The technicians encountered fallen trees, washed-out roads and driving rain while installing long run generators at key sites. 

At the GOC, Silcar held constant stakeholder conferences with Telstra management, Telstra frontline staff and emergency services.

In an extraordinary turn of events, just as Cyclone Ului touched land, Perth experienced one of its most severe storms in decades.  At its peak, over 540 Telstra sites were without power in south-west Western Australia.

While co-ordinating the response to Cyclone Ului, Silcar also co-ordinated the response to the Western Australian storm event.  We established a ground control in Perth, and worked in conjunction with Western Power to decide on restoration priorities.  More than 29 Silcar field technicians were deployed during the WA storm event, including additional staff from Adelaide.

Our responses to both Cyclone Ului and the WA storm event demonstrated our capabilities during Mass Disruption events, and our capabilities in massive mobilisation of both organisational and personnel resources.

This is a key capability we have provided to Telstra in other Mass Disruption events including Cyclone Yasi, Queensland floods and Victorian bushfires.

Innovative Outcomes

During the first three years of the contract, the reliability of Telstra exchanges increased by an impressive 60%, and the reliability of other asset classes increased by 25%.  And while the number of assets in the period rose by 14%, service disruptions fell.  In particular, service disruptions during Mass Disruption events fell by more than 33%.

Just prior to the third anniversary of the contract, a study was commissioned which showed Silcar had delivered annual savings of $10 million, consistently exceeding its target every year.  In fact, Silcar delivered a $35 million saving for the three years to 2009, and delivered a $60 million saving by the end of 2010.

These savings were delivered through a number of measures including having our Field Technicians take on facilities management responsibilities, in addition to their traditional roles and responsibilities.

Also in 2010, Silcar implemented a new regional management strategy.  Previously, emergency support was co-ordinated at the state level; but this change allowed for co-ordination to be managed at a more micro, regional level.

Today, Silcar continues to meet Telstra’s expectation of further cost savings while maintaining and improving network reliability on a day-to-day basis.