Open Spatial contract win with Victorian water authority

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 15 November 2009 11:49

IT Industry - Deals

Victorian Government owned water authority, Western Water, has deployed a solution from Open Spatial to manage its spatial data for servicing nearly 50,000 of its customers in regional towns west of Melbourne.

The authority said it had selected Open Spatial Australia to supply its corporate spatial solutions for servicing a population of 135,000 in towns and urban locations west of Melbourne including Bacchus Marsh, Gisborne, Melton, Sunbury and Woodend. The authority provides water and wastewater services to the towns, managing 2,850km of wastewater, water and recycled water underground networks.

The Managing Director of Western Water, John Wilkinson, said that “Open Spatial’s Solution will offer Western Water innovative solutions to managing its spatial data, from the survey through to the design of infrastructure projects, throughout construction and as a daily tool for maintenance and ongoing management of systems and services.

“As a result, Western Water will have greater capacity to move quickly to isolate problem areas but, more importantly, to monitor performance and to better plan the network.”

According to Wilkinson, Western Water will be “better able to isolate and manage pipeline leaks and bursts and other infrastructure incidents, as well as monitoring the performance of its systems more accurately.

Wilkinson said Open Spatial is well recognised for delivering mapping software and individualised applications to government and utilities sectors throughout the Asia Pacific region, and that “Western Water’s GIS capability was developed several years ago and has required extensive refinement over the past four years within the capabilities of the initial system.

“This system reached the end of its use-by date and Western Water has now put in place a specialised water industry mapping facility (enlighten & Munsys) that is compliant with its other databases to record and manage its 2,850km underground pipeline network.”

Wilkinson also said that Western Water had conducted a select tender assessment process that targeted companies present in the Victorian water industry.

According to Open Spatial, it now provides its Spatial Solution to seven out of 17 (41%) of urban water authorities in Victoria.