Beating up Sydney Water

Can Sydney Water get anything right?  Only a few years ago they were damned by the Auditor-General for their abandoned water billing implementation; now their CRM has come under fire in a report by NSW auditor-general Peter Achterstraat has criticised Sydney Water's implementation of a Siebel customer relationship management system which is running $34 million over budget and one-and-a-half years over schedule.  The rollout of the Maximo asset management application has also been criticised.

"Sydney Water customer management system is now expected to cost $55 million, more than double original budget of $21 million and one-and-a-half years behind schedule," the auditor report said. The original due date was August 2009, but it is not set to be delivered until February 2011.  The expanded budget was due to external costs, according to the auditors. "The significant increase in budget is due to the system integrator costs," the report said.  IBM had won the integration work, but it seemed prices were higher across the industry than the utility expected. "The budget for this stage of the project was found to be inadequate after receiving quotes from prospective service providers," the report said.

The schedule was dragged out by a year-and-a-half because of extending the design phase and a long procurement process. The integration work went out to tender in October last year.  Once implemented, the project, which also has a second phase, bringing expenditure up to $68.9 million, is expected to reduce operating costs by $1.9 million a year. It is also expected to improve customer service and reduce reliance on multiple unsupportable systems.  "Sydney Water is currently undertaking a major upgrade of its IT systems," said a spokesperson for the utility, responding to the report. "The reason why two large IT projects have exceeded their original budget estimates is because they were early estimates."

It would appear the Sydney Water is again reviewing potential replacements for its water billing application.