SA Water Case Study

SA Water Civil Maintenance Fleet

Hidrive Ute Service Bodies - Fit For Purpose
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SA Water
SA Water is a water utility that is wholly owned by the Government of South Australia. SA Water employs more than 1,400 South Australians across a broad range of disciplines and operate over $14 billion of assets, delivering essential water and sewerage services to more than 1.7 million South Australians.
Headquarters
Adelaide South Australia, Australia
Company Size
1,400 employees

The Client

SA Water provides services to around 1.7 million South Australians, supplying, removing and treating water and wastewater.

Operators work across geographically and climatically diverse sites, from Ceduna and Port Augusta in the South, to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, in the North, across to the Riverlands Mount Gambier and most places in between!

Hidrive partnered with SA Water, Lend Lease and Service Stream to deliver this milestone project.

Needs Analysis

Two key problems were faced:

  • Firstly, when updating the core fleet, SA Water was faced with vehicle supply issues as part of COVID-related global stock shortages.
  • And secondly, practises relying on excavators and big heavy equipment were to be replaced by “modern technology – Hydrovac units, blasting units… requiring a material change in the vehicle selection”, said Michael Bourke, Service Stream’s PPEV Transition Lead for the SA Water Services Delivery Project.

Solution

After listening and understanding all of the issues, Hidrive was able to recommend the design of two distinct types of purpose-built service bodies, tailored to the tasks SA Water crews deal with on a daily basis.

  • The first was the Sewer Service Body,  designed to provide civil maintenance for the sewer network right up to the inspection point of a house.“When someone has a blockage, and it’s not near the main in the street, the Hidrive body has a sewer blaster on it and it’s there to free the network,” Bourke explains.
  • The second specially-designed Hidrive body designed for SA Water was a ‘water maintenance’ type, designed to enable crews to carry out small water repairs, to “clear minor blockages and allow for meter replacements”.

With the fit-for-purpose Hidrive Service Bodies solution, Isuzu D-Max utes could be sourced.

The project was starting to fall into place.

Now, the entire project hinged on strict timelines to deliver the purpose-built Hidrive Service Bodies to ensure the ongoing delivery of SA Water’s services.

Delivering nationally, with certainty.

Through careful planning, manufacturing and installation agility along with extensive experience in the industry, Hidrive delivered SA Water’s entire fleet of 63 purpose-built Service Bodies in under five months.

“They never missed a delivery date through the transition”

Updating a large fleet can be daunting, especially when you cannot afford to have vehicles off the road while waiting for replacements.

“What Hidrive have done for Service Stream [SA Water] is deliver for our day one deadline. There aren’t many body manufacturers that could deliver 63 vehicles in a timely schedule,”
said Bourke.

Several other factors also enabled Hidrive to deliver as the Service Body provider for SA Water.

“They’re very good at communicating and keeping us updated on their progress…”

Configurability and versatility of the Hidrive proprietary modular design was also key as was a dedicated support team.

“The inside of the Hidrive, the way it’s actually set up, it gives us the flexibility of having long and short tools, for example the drawer that comes out, the toolbox on either side, and the freedom of actually opening everything up for a 360-degree view of the Hidrive unit are key to our crews being effective, efficient and comfortable.”

Safety, Durability, Versatility

“The safety features and the fit out for the Water Maintenance ute, we carefully worked through to fit items such as LED lights in the cabins, so when the doors open up we’ve got LED lighting. The crews are working all times of day and are on-call at night, so it’s very important to have lights for them to work quickly and easily in safety.

“We’ve set up the drawers and internal cabinets so that we could fit both tooling and inventory. We worked closely with Hidrive in regard to what the application was going to be and what tools and inventory were needed to do our job.”

“We also changed the door design on the driver’s side, so when the technician was working on the street the door folds. That means it doesn’t overhang the road…”

“Our crews work in winter and all sorts of weather, so we need the protection from the rain when they’re operating out of the ute.”

The Result

  • 63

    Fit-for-purpose Hidrive service bodies delivered.

  • 49

    Water maintenance vehicle fitouts.

  • 14

    Rapid response maintenance vehicle fitouts.

  • 100%

    Delivery in full, on-time, in under 5 months

  • 100%

    Change to a more modern methodology for service delivery for SA Water.

  • 100%

    Satisfaction with Hidrive's quality, professionalism and communication to deliver fit-for-purpose Service Bodies, on time.

SA Water is now equipped with a service fleet that is more capable, cost-effective and tailored to the needs of its crew.

From SA Water:

“We fit it all in; we’ve had great feedback from the technicians and obviously Hidrive have been fantastic.
Critical in keeping the project flowing was Hidrive’s extensive experience.”
Yahia Jammoul, SA Water, South East Water Supervisor

From Service Stream:

“When I came on board in January [2020], Hidrive had a concept design. When we got the operational team together, we made some material changes to the [service] bodies, and we worked very closely with Doug and the team at Hidrive to make those changes. With the quality of the CAD drawings and the design, we finalised those by February; production started in March, and we had all the bodies delivered here early June. It was very, very easy and Hidrive was completely flexible, ensuring we were getting exactly what we needed.”
Michael Bourke

Takeaways

Hidrive Service Bodies for utes, trailes and trucks are fit for purpose, delivered on time, with certainty.

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