Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency CASE STUDY: Asset Management Data Standard

Company-X has been working alongside Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to help Road Controlling Authorities (RCAs) in Wellington and Wairarapa migrate to the new Asset Management Data Standard (AMDS). Company-X worked with the AMDS Programme at Waka Kotahi to help define the standard, providing critical advice ensuring the standard was implementable at Waka Kotahi and the 68 RCAs. Company-X was also intimately involved in prototype migrations and resolved many issues which fed back into changes to the standard.

A great transport system helps New Zealanders to get the most out of life.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency is working with its partners to create a transport system that’s safe, accessible, and easy to use - a transport system that connects people, places, and products for a thriving Aotearoa.

We’re helping plan communities to ensure these are great places to live and providing better access to public transport and supporting walking and cycling to make it easy for people to get around.

Well-planned transport investment delivers social, economic, and environmental benefits, enabling everyone to easily access jobs, schools, health facilities and essential services.

By listening to our customers, embracing new technology and responding to change, we’re delivering a transport system that reduces deaths and serious injuries, as well as the impact on the environment, and that will meet the needs of tomorrow.

Without a national data standard New Zealand’s Waka Kotahi and the 68 RCAs, including the Department of Conservation, have an inconsistent approach to data capture and definition across the transport sector.

AMDS will enforce a tighter level of control on data that is loosely defined. The tightening of constraints will mean those datasets need to be updated to comply with the standard, which will lead to more consistent use across the roading sector

Data standards are documented agreements on representation, format, definition, structuring, tagging, transmission, manipulation, use, and management of data.

Waka Kotahi consulted with Company-X’s transport sector subject matter experts’ co-founder and director Jeremy Hughes and Nigel Lynton as AMDS was defined. Between 1992 and 2014 Hughes and Lynton worked on the business analysis, data design and modelling of Thinkproject’s Road Assessment and Maintenance Management (RAMM) database. Their combined quarter century of experience not only gave them an unparalleled knowledge of RAMM’s data design but an essential grasp of the purpose and goal of that design.

The Road Efficiency Group (REG) also consulted with Company-X on how to include minor structures in the standard.

Company-X also assisted with the AMDS prototype migration. The project tested migration of real-world data to the standard. It also validated the ability to implement the standard across the NZ roading sector including RCAs, maintenance contractors and professional engineering services.

Company-X developed toolsets to enable automated rapid migration to AMDS and testing. Company-X’s automated toolsets interrogate the data in RAMM and, in the migration process, ensures it has the right structure and is migrated to the right location.

The AMDS prototype work developed in partnership with Company-X analysed and validated the data belonging to several RCAs.

This provided the information required to develop a repeatable model to implement in ten tranches and phased over five years. It is expected that all RCAs will be using AMDS by June 2027.

Company-X’s automated rapid migration and testing tool is helping RCAs in tranches 1 and 2 implement AMDS.

“AMDS is starting to have real impact on how we are thinking and working. We are preparing for the implementation into our database and already planning how it will enable us into digital engineering. AMDS is just in time for us as we support the data and information needs of the large, complex, and ambitious Let’s Get Wellington Moving projects. The interest and support from across the sector is fantastic as we make the changes we need for a new way of working.”

Wellington City Council's Pamela Brown