FM Innovations help Rio Tinto in space and asset management

In 1997, Rio Tinto, one of the well-known mining exploration companies, engaged FM Innovations to implement their Space Management program, Aperture. Ros McMeekin, the former Superintendent of Office Services, Rio Tinto, knew that productivity and spatial management could be improved.

Ros McMeekin called on FM Innovations to diagnose the needs of Rio Tinto and determine a way of achieving the improvements she wanted. FM Innovations acted as a conduit between the different stakeholders within Rio Tinto and helped to identify all the different agendas and requirements within the company.

The next step was to interpret these objectives into tangible evidence that Rio Tinto would be able to experience as evidence of the objectives met, which in turn helped generate the specifications that turned design into reality. Since then FM Innovations have worked closely with Rio Tinto and have surpassed all the objectives and developed new on-going goals with the addition of new software and additional modules to the original program.

Over the past 11 years Rio Tinto have faced problems including;

• Inefficient spatial management
• Inadequate asset management capabilities
• Lack of a comprehensive software program to record, monitor and manage their works, assets and OH&S incidents
• No visitor registration and ability to print out visitor labels and track their attendance for safety and evacuation management purposes
• An arduous room management system

Rio Tinto and FM Innovations have formed a partnership over the past 11 years, with FM Innovations’ ability to work closely with Rio Tinto’s staff to identify significant performance goals and to develop a package tailored to their needs. Working closely with important staff members the implementation process proved to be a seamless step that allowed Rio Tinto to migrate into their everyday working habits.

FM Innovations resolved these problem areas by:

• Installing and implementing Aperture that enabled Rio Tinto to access and modify electronic plans for all the buildings
• Installing WSMenterprise in-conjunction with Aperture with barcoding technology allowing full asset and works management capabilities
• Utilising WSMenterprise to record, monitor and manage their works, assets and OH&S incidents
• Creating Visitor Management application with barcode printing and scanning capabilities
• Installing the Room Event Management module to WSM

Rio Tinto find, mine and process the earth's mineral resources - metals and minerals essential for making thousands of everyday products that meet society's needs and contribute to improved living standards. Rio Tinto’s activities span the world with production from every continent. Their products include aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy products, gold, industrial minerals and iron ore.

FM Innovations initially united with Rio Tinto in 1996, when they helped Rio Tinto acquire a space management capability (space occupied by department) and eliminated the employment of (expensive and inefficient) architects in small refurbishment tasks in their tenancy.

The results were achieved through the use of the FM Innovations’ product Aperture. This allowed Rio Tinto’s staff to have the ability to access electronic plans for quoting purposes or to plan changes of floor layouts to maximise space. Staff also use the Aperture program by looking at floor plans and to identify where an actual staff member is located.

Working closely with Rio Tinto in the next few years as their needs grew and the mining boom was taking shape, FM Innovations discovered that there was a need for a comprehensive software program to record activities such as OH&S incidents, managing quotations, generating purchase orders, amortising consumable costs and generating internal labour charges, as well as improving the overall workflow of the process of the works management.

FM Innovations took up the challenge to create a Works and Asset software program that could manage all the requirements. FM Innovations worked closely with the Rio Tinto staff and tailored WSMenterprise to meet their requirements.

WSMenterprise consists of a “portal” approach to information and functional deployment, with all the security and access controls required to cater for all manner of internal and external users or stakeholders in the system and its processes.

WSMenterprise
WSMenterprise also provides portable high quality bar code devices and software to support the management of these audits and workloads. The seamless integration of the portable workcentre with the streamlined management capability of WSMenterprise means Essential Safety Measures and other important property compliance audits and work can be undertaken with far greater accuracy than ever before.

Then they expanded the system to include an employee database for Personnel Management and started identifying network cabling points. Rio Tinto can track the locations of all major and minor assets. FM Innovations helped them record and track these assets with the help of bar-coding that interfaces with their space management system.

The objectives of this project were to add an automated process in the management of the Rio Tinto asset base. The combination of Aperture and WSMenterprise provided time saving methods, greater accuracy and timeliness of data to enable Rio Tinto to achieve the following:

• Perform annual audits
• Add in new assets
• Change existing asset records
• Dispose of assets
• Run reports on the assets and their categories
• Control and log all PEE testing
• Locate assets

FM Innovations also installed a Room Booking/Event Module that links with the bar-coding technology. The REM module will allow Rio Tinto to book rooms, classify and define room usage, manage all resources used for these bookings including security, guest lists, catering and equipment, audio visual management and teleconferencing. Previously when staff wanted to book meeting rooms it was undertaken manually and did become messy and unprofessional at times.

“Training our staff to use WSM (for Room Event Management) has made it clearer for all and has made bookings more simple and easy to achieve. The staff are now able to look ahead with the diary in WSM to see if a respective room is free before planning a date and time for a meeting or workshop,” Neil Brazier, Superintendent of Property and Office Services, Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto's Boardrooms
Not only security issues are at stake with visitor registrations and room bookings but it is also the OH&S and safety management disciplines within an organisation need to be aware of all the people that occupy their site at any given moment in time. The nature of visitors to a site (or individual buildings or floors) can be many and varied and to allow for these contingencies and to reduce work needed to register and manage these visitors.

FM Innovations’ REM and WSM systems place their contractors and meeting guests on the Visitor Management system automatically. Thus, the REM Visitors Management (VM) system is designed to record all visitor types to premises and to reinforce existing visitor management processes in place at any work environment.

REM VM is designed to integrate in with reception and guard activities so that it decreases their workload and significantly reduces the confusion often associated with visitor management. The VM controller who may be a guard, receptionist or at any designated role in an organisation has access to VM and is able to inquire on the expected visitors and their purpose for any time period. The controller can also issue adhoc visitor permits through the system.

WSM Visitor Management
The VM system at Rio Tinto is configured with a printer and a bar code scanning device. The Rio Tinto configuration uses bar coded visitor permits/badges to identify each visitor and this is then swiped through the scanner to register the person as having arrived and registered.

The permit/badge is configured to suit the organisation or meeting but has bar code and person’s name as mandatory items. Upon returning to the exit point to return their badge, it is then scanned again into the VM system and the visitor is considered to have left the site. The VM system registers and manages the visitors and their time spent on the site. If the visitor does not attend at the expected time the VM system will keep track of the fact that they are late so that the internal host can be kept notified.

When scanned into the system the visitor then is tracked time wise so that if they are not scanned on their way out then the VM system alerts the controller. The controller can override this manually. This is especially useful if Rio Tinto wanted to start closely monitoring trades and services that usually charge by the hour.

Customised front and back labels
There is nothing but praise from all the staff involved at Rio Tinto on how migrating to the FM Innovations software was all achieved. Fm Innovations have a “hands on approach”.

For Rio Tinto, having a support team close by and the software programs being user friendly are important requirements and one of the most important reasons why the relationship between them and FM Innovations has worked so well over the years. There has been an immeasurable amount of not only money, but just as importantly, time savings, with the help of FM Innovations.