PROJ6017: PCA Property Condition Assessment Project been assigned, and the Ministers are concerned that this is the "tip of the iceberg". Ministers have been asked by Parliament to provide a status report, identifying the cost of Background to the Overall Project upgrades to existing assets in each department, and a second report which will provide a The Property Government Department (PGD) is responsible for the construction and Cost Benefit Analysis, determining which assets should be maintained and upgraded, and maintenance of all properties utilised to provide services to the Community. The PGD which should be sold or decommissioned to recoup costs. manages and maintains buildings and assets for the Department of Housing, and Health, A decision has been taken by the relevant Ministers to outsource the Property Condition and is responsible to the specific Department Ministers for maintenance, budget and assessment function and an organisation has been selected on the basis of a successful reporting of status of the buildings. 202 tender process. The selected organisation is Proactive Property Maintenance (PPM). PPM The PGD uses the BiiP (Building Integrated Information Program) application to store all has branches in each State of Australia, and have successful contracts with several State details of all buildings across these Government Departments building assets. New assets Government authorities, in the condition assessment and maintenance of assets, specifically are entered into this system upon acquisition, and follow a regular annual maintenance buildings. Their employees use ipad tablets which are newer technology. program to ensure that they are maintained to the highest possible standard, following These ipad tablets contain an application via which the property condition contract staff legislative and regulatory requirements. The main aim of the application and maintenance gather all of the required condition data and via which they store photos of specific areas program is to reduce rebuilding costs by effective and regular maintenance. A component of and issues which have been identified. The employees are able to connect to a Wi-Fi this maintenance program is regular checks of property condition. The Property Condition connection, to transfer this data to the PPM server for further consideration. Once the data check has been carried out, up until recently, by internal PGD maintenance staff, who have is transferred to PPM, it is manipulated and further transferred to the client department for used a tablet to gather the data and submit it directly to the Blip application. upload to their internal applications for reporting and scheduling of further maintenance. The Initial Problem ens The contract has been signed for three years, with the option of two further extensions of three years each. The contract will only allow for the assessment of property condition and Over several years, maintenance staff numbers have been reduced, and the PGD has been the transfer of data, including photos to PGD in a format which can be used for input to Blip. unable to employ replacement staff with the required skills, to carry out Property Condition assessments. It has come to light that rather than carrying out assessments and associated Creation of the Data Collection and Data Transfer Project (DCTP) preventative maintenance annually, the PGD is now 5 years behind in Property Condition Based on the requirements identified by Parliament, and the concern for quality of data to assessments. This has resulted in increased maintenance costs due to the lack of be entered and maintained in the Blip Asset Management System, a new project (PCAR or preventative maintenance, and the maintenance requests list is also growing significantly. Property Condition Assessment Reporting) has been established, to identify and implement Risks of fire, due to unmaintained and out of date smoke detectors, and smoke detectors all steps which are required to be taken, to provide the final reports to Parliament. Knowing whose batteries have been removed, have increased. the depth of the delay in Property Condition assessments, the Project Team have been Several assets, which were built more recently, have been found to contain cladding which is provided a budget of $6M to carry out all the activities to bring the assessment data up to not fire resistant, and therefore no longer complies with the updated Building Code. The date, and to develop a series of data transfer and validation applications which will migrate need to identify and upgrade these assets has added to the list of works which have not yet the collected data to the BiiP Asset Management System. Reports for DepartmentSecretaries and Ministers of Parliament will be generated using Power-BI from the data development and testing resources. As a result, three additional testing resources and two cube available from BiiP Asset Management Property Condition Modules. additional development resources were added to the Project Delivery Team. These contract resources added to the cost of the DCTP project. The Project Steering Committee (PSC) and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from within the two Departments, met to identify their specific requirements regarding the collection and The Development Team began the development of four modules of DCTP, while the Testing transfer of data. Several iterations of the requirements were developed and, in each case, Team began the documentation of Test Scripts based on the Requirements Traceability Matrix the Project Manager and the Project Team found great difficulty in achieving agreed signoff which had been developed by the Project Manager and which was based on the agreed and of the requirements. Each Departmental SME had a different vision of the final report, signed Requirements. especially the data it should contain. The PSC members, who also included the SMEs, had The Validation Module validated the batch id and number of records for each their own vision of the flow of processes and timelines required to ensure that the collected batch of data transferred from PPM to a secure ftp server. condition data was of relevant quality and would not damage the integrity of data in the Blip Asset Management system. The Download Module downloaded the data from the secure ftp server and transferred it to a holding application. The holding application checked all data for The Project Manager had to remind the Project Steering Committee of the need for data validity of codes and data, so that the correct codes were entered, and so that the integrity and that maintenance activities were based on the existing data which needed to data that was transferred matched the expected data for each field. This be confirmed when new property condition data was uploaded. Project Steering Committee application produced a list of batches with outcomes, which allowed the members included SMEs from the Departments, and they readily accepted any increase of Department Staff to spot check the data and then approve it for transfer to the scope stating that there was "plenty of budget" . The Project Manager constantly needed to Final Staging module remind the Steering Committee members of the overall budget constraints for the data Un transfer applications project, and the projected costs of report development. The budget The Final Staging Module allowed staff to open a full record and to check the allocation for the total project was $6M, which included the data collection contract with photos that were transferred with the records. At the completion of these PPM and the development of the reports after the data had been collected and transferred validation checks, the staff member would approve the valid records and release to BiiP. The IT data transfer application project (DCTP) was afforded $200K and was to be for upload to the Blip Asset Management Property Condition module. completed within 6 weeks. While the DCTP budget was $200K, the PSC was very ready to allocate further budget from the PCAT budget, where DCPT scope increase was concerned. The Upload Module created the new record in BiiP and created a history record, containing the previous data, and an audit of the creation of the new record. After some time, the requirements for the data transfer application (Data Collection and Photos were uploaded and attached to the Asset record under the Property Data Transfer Project - DCTP) were agreed and signed by all parties. The Project Manager Condition Module, and the Asset was classified according to its current status. circulated the agreed and signed requirements to the Development and Testing Team as well as to the PSC and the SMEs. The Development and Testing teams estimated the effort The Testing Team continued to create the test scenarios and test scripts relying on the agreed Requirements document and the Requirements Traceability Matrix. Since there was and duration of development and testing. Based on these detailed requirements, estimates were accurately completed, and a schedule was created. The schedule determined that the no data from PPM at this stage, the Testing team also created test data based on current work would not be completed within the required six weeks, without additional data in the BiiP Asset Management System and the previous Property Condition systemused within the Departments. They stored their test scenarios and scripts in the Mercury directly by one SME. It was discovered that this SME was on good terms with the TestDirector application. Development Team members, and regularly came into their area, carrying a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. He would sit down and discuss the development process, how they were The schedule for development, testing and delivery was very tight, and only allowed the tracking, and when the Developer showed him the current application, would ask for allocated six weeks for development, testing and implementation. The Project Manager changes to what had been developed. Due to the short and constrained timelines and checked the work performance daily, using EVA to ensure that the visual checks on budget, the Department had chosen a Predictive Delivery approach and had included, performance were validated. PSC Steering Committee Meetings were held weekly. The within the Project Management Plan, a rigorous Change Control Process. Thus, all requested modules were developed concurrently, in order to shorten the development time, with the changes to the project scope, schedule or cost had to be logged with the Project Manager intention of writing the transfer code that would link each module, once each module had been individually tested and passed. 13 and approved by the Change Control Board. Members of the Change Control Board were also members of the Project Steering Committee. In this case, the additions and changes to The specifications of the batch including codes, xml layout and validation rules, were requirements had bypassed the Change Control Process, as neither the SME or the provided to the vendor (PPM) to ensure that the data they collected and the format in Developer had logged the changes, or notified anyone in the Project Team. The initial which it was uploaded to the transfer protocol, was compliant and would pass validation solution was to require rework via redevelopment of the IT code to comply with the signed tests in the newly developed module of the DCTP. Specifications of the batch load header Requirements. However further discussions and investigations, using the Change Control and process were also agreed and supplied to PPM who would carry out the property process, resulting in testing rework via which the test scripts and scenarios were condition inspections, and upload the data and photos. See Appendix 2 for the collection, redeveloped to comply with the new requirements. The Requirements document was also transfer, and load process using the combined applications. updated and signed again. Problems within the Data Collection and Data Transfer Project (DCTP) The vendor, PPM, developed test data for transfer to the first module of the Data Transfer module. These data transfer tests failed, initially due to incorrect validation of the batch Testing began as soon as the first completed module was available. The first tests failed with header. Once the headers were corrected, the data failed due to data validation tests in the many test cases not achieving the required results. The data that was tested should have first module. At this point, the project was three weeks into the six-week plan, and the passed the validation tests, however, this was not the case. This outcome caused Project Management Team needed to consider solutions which would allow satisfactory consternation amongst the project team. During the team meeting including the Project completion of each module, management of continued scope creep, and a different Management team, the Testing Team and the Development Team, it became obvious that approach to the test cycle. The outcomes required different processes, which resulted in the test cases were not aligned to the module that was developed. changes in which the Project Team, and the Stakeholders would need to work differently. The Project Manager checked the signed and agreed Requirements Document and the The PPM IT development staff required a better understanding of the requirements of the Requirements Traceability Matrix and found that the Test Scripts and Testing Requirements transfer protocol and more effective validation of data prior to generating the batches of fully matched these. The Development Team however spoke up and advised the entire team data for upload. The Department Staff required changes in the process of validation of the that the module that was developed did not align to the signed Requirements Document. data that was transferred. Therefore, the test scripts were not testing what had been developed, but what had been As a starting point, the Project Team assigned one Departmental Development Team initially agreed. Further investigation identified scope changes that had been requestedmember to the PPM IT development team to solve their technical and data transfer issues. However, the Project Management Team and the Steering Committee were still at odds regarding scope management, change control processes and how to maintain the budget. The Project Manager had three weeks in which to complete the development, testing and delivery of this project and needed to reassess the Project Management approach