Delivering Under Pressure: How councils can adapt to shrinking budgets, deteriorating assets and net zero expectations - Brightly Software

Managing the complexities of council assets and the diverse impact they have on local communities is no mean feat, particularly when funding from central government is only heading in one direction: downwards!

With budget cuts, rising community expectations, environmental responsibilities and evolving legislation – all on top of managing physical assets – it is clear why councils need to invest in more sophisticated asset management processes.

Within a council, there can be many different factors and suppliers at play, sometimes adding unnecessary levels of complexities to any one job. With multiple suppliers, data can become disjoined over time, which can ultimately lead to reactive maintenance, rather than a proactive outlook. Fixing problems is always more expensive in the long-run rather than preventing them from happening in the first place.

Councils have a multitude of assets to monitor and manage at any one time – drainage, parks and grounds, highways, bridges and structures, and more – and understanding the characteristics and patterns of these assets takes time. However, by using centralised data across asset classes can help councils to understand these behaviours, as well as the impact between them.

Take highways and drainage, for example, in this scenario: A gully along a highway is blocked and there is a weather warning for heavy rain. Overnight, the rainfall causes localised flooding which means road closures and diversions are put in place. A subsequent cold snap causes the surface water to freeze, causing icy road conditions and a deterioration of the road’s surface.

With all assets managed in one system, this risk could have been avoided. Councils would be aware that the gully was prone to blockage and that the road condition in that particular area was already fallible. With this information, a proactive plan could have been put in place to ensure regular clearing of the impacted gullies and a priority level set for resurfacing works on the road.

One system. One supplier.

The shift to greater digitisation in asset management is helping councils to meet these challenges by enabling them to interrogate operations, support financial decisions and deliver cost efficiencies that stretch budgets further, while also benefitting communities.

Brightly’s digital asset management tool, Confirm, is an intuitive, user-friendly and robust system that supports smart management to facilitate local authorities’ service improvements. It centralises assets to simplify and streamline the processes involved with managing them. 

With Confirm, everyone works from the same centralised data across each council department, meaning: one point of data input, one system for the team to learn from, and one place to pull real-time information from.

A customer’s perspective

By using Confirm, Brightly’s customers are benefitting from being able to inform and defend decisions, make budgets work harder for their communities and deliver better services more quickly to councillors and members of the community.

“We started using Confirm in January 2004. The reason we bought this software was because we were unable to defend an insurance claim, because we couldn't prove the negative. If you haven't got the information, it’s very hard to evidence. So, finding bits of paper - When did you inspect? Did you inspect? What did you find? Having it all there you can prove the negatives as well.” – Ruth Hughes, Leicestershire County Council

“Hidden data, or data which is not looked after or is locked away somewhere, is an immature sign in an organisation. So, having a system where it's easy and possible to put that data in, helps us to quicken up the pace to design schemes, respond to councillors and members of the public, and deliver better services.” – Chris Faires, Hertfordshire County Council

“The mobile, offline working with Confirm Connect is fantastic, in my opinion. It's key to a lot of our field staff and the efficiencies that we get. There's no double handling of information, for example.” – Richard Evans, West Sussex County Council

“There isn’t an infinite amount of money or resources, so we need to make sure we’re making the right decisions at the right time to get the most out of taxpayers’ money. By using asset data to make decisions, we’re providing the best value to the community.” – Shaun Taylor, Bristol City Council

“We’re a very large council with hundreds and thousands of assets that needed to sit in a proper system. With Confirm, we now have much more granularity and a deeper understanding of our assets. We can see an asset issue right from the time it gets reported to the minute it gets completed. This system enables us to properly account for what’s happened to our various assets right across the network.” – Carol Valentine, Kent County Council

If you’d like to find out more about how Brightly’s Confirm software can unite assets, click here: https://www.brightlysoftware.com/en-gb/industries/government?utm_source=APSE&utm_medium=Digital