Page 59 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2019

opportunities in the land domain
“We currently have over 5,000 pieces of mobile equipment that we are supporting across multiple industries under various arrangements,” Main said. “From trains and trams through to mining vehicles and plant/equipment, we’re managing that equipment all around the country.”
Downer found that a big part of the chal- lenge with Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) is that they come from a range of providers, all with proprietary standards. Gathering all the sensor feeds that are already in place and collating then using that data is the key.
“Anyone can put an IoT sensor on some- thing but how do you get the data back to somewhere useful where it can be used?” Main asked. “Disaggregated data was a major issue. In a mining context, we were able to develop a program that collated data from a number of HUMS sources, both on individual and fleet wide, transmit that data from remote locations
via a self-healing mesh network that would use whatever technology was best placed to do so, to get that info back to the maintenance office where it could be actioned.”
This data set is then used as the base of condition-based monitoring and mainte- nance. Main explains how you would be able to pinpoint individual drivers based no how they used a vehicle. This predictive modelling saw their mine sites make signifi- cant gains in reliability, availability and ef- ficiency when it came to fleet management.
Current programs
“A large part of what we’re doing in Defence is under the Estate Maintenance and Opera- tion Support (EMOS) contractor work, that was part of the Spotless business,” Main said when looking at the $635 million in turnover that Downer posted in the most recent ADM Top 40 Defence Contractor Survey, which saw the company rank number 8 on the list.
Downer owns 88 per cent of Spotless.
“We’re doing a lot with E&I Group cur- rently, but our history in the defence space goes back to before WWII,” Main ex- plained. “We’ve built ships [under companies now part of the Downer Group] in the past and have a strong history in this space. Plus, we have over 2,500 ADF veterans as current employees across the business. Because at our core we’re an engineering company.”
Given their work in the MSP space, Main says that Downer will be careful when it comes to opportunities above and below the line in the fleet management space to prevent a possible conflict of interest.
“The land domain makes the most sense for us to move into,” Main explained to ADM. “We work well with international OEMs, we have form in this space already at every part of the capability life cycle in related industries and we can bring some value here I think.”
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