Thirty-three years of systems that move vehicles

Mandate

Replace ageing receival and terminal systems without disrupting harvest, and bring cyber and access risk under board-level oversight.

Outcomes

• Deferred receival-platform cutover to March 2024 at a disclosed cost of A$2.6 million
• Introduced booking slots at six sites, cutting average peak queuing to 1 hour 5 minutes
• Separated trading-subsidiary access from third-party vessel nominations in 2022
• Established a harvest change freeze and an offline terminal recovery procedure

Decisions in context

Ninderbrook gave me the full chain from a grower's truck to a ship's hold. The mandate on arrival was to replace a receival system older than some of our site staff and to give the board a clearer view of technology risk. I report to the chief executive and present to the audit and risk committee each quarter. My team is organised around receival and grower systems, terminal and logistics systems, infrastructure and security, and data. The work that matters most happens in about ten weeks each year, so I have built the rest of the calendar around protecting them. I have also learnt the limits of my role. Booking slots, the receival deferral and the terminal access rebuild each required operational and commercial colleagues to accept a cost, and those decisions were the chief executive's and board's to make on our recommendation.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first compatible non-executive role alongside it.

Mandate

Replace paper-based rostering and driver-hours records across nine depots and stabilise depot systems.

Outcomes

• Moved nine depots to one rostering and driver-hours system by 2017
• Cut roster changes made after a shift had started by about a third
• Introduced quarterly technology-risk reporting to the owners' risk committee

Decisions in context

Kurrajine ran 410 buses and coaches from nine depots, with school contracts, regular regional routes and charter work. When I arrived, depots kept driver hours on paper and rostered in spreadsheets, and a late change often meant a telephone call to a driver already on the road. The fatigue rules under the Heavy Vehicle National Law apply to heavy buses as well as trucks, and the owners wanted confidence that their rosters complied. I worked with the operations manager to move all depots to a single rostering and driver-hours system over two years, with depot supervisors testing every screen before release. I reported quarterly to the owners' risk committee on system reliability and data quality. Those reports taught me to describe a risk in terms of what could happen on a road, not what could happen to a server.

Reason for the move

Joined Ninderbrook for a CIO role in the grain region where my wife's family farms.

Mandate

Run IT services, then manage the transfer of infrastructure and service desk to an outsourcer after the 2011 ownership change.

Outcomes

• Transferred infrastructure and service desk to an outsourcer in 2011 within budget
• Reduced annual infrastructure cost by about 18 per cent over three years
• Brought quoting-system support back in-house in 2014 after repeated pricing errors

Decisions in context

I joined Hallendry from Feltmoor after implementing its transport management system as a consultant. Two years later new private equity owners asked me to outsource infrastructure and the service desk. I ran the tender, negotiated the contract and managed the transition, and the savings came through as planned. What I had underestimated was knowledge. Two long-serving staff who understood how the quoting system priced difficult jobs left during the transition, and errors in quotes for apartment moves began reaching customers. I proposed bringing support for that one system back in-house while keeping the rest of the contract. The chief financial officer agreed after I showed the cost of the errors against the cost of two salaries. That experience shapes how I decide what Ninderbrook buys from partners and what it must always understand itself.

Reason for the move

Moved to lead a technology function with direct exposure to heavy-vehicle operations.

Mandate

Lead transport management system implementations for road carriers and logistics clients.

Outcomes

• Led eleven transport management system implementations
• Introduced a depot-observation week before configuration on every project
• Grew the practice from five to twelve consultants

Decisions in context

Consulting showed me many transport businesses in a short time. I led eleven implementations, mostly for road carriers moving general freight and one removals company. The pattern that stayed with me was that clients often bought software hoping it would settle an argument between sales, dispatch and finance. It seldom did. The projects that went well began with a week in the depot watching how work actually moved, before anyone configured a screen. I made that week standard when I became practice manager, and it cost us some bids where clients wanted a faster start. I managed twelve consultants, set their project assignments and was accountable for the practice's results to the managing partner. The role also taught me to write a statement of work that a client's operations manager could read, a skill I still use with our own partners.

Reason for the move

Accepted an in-house role at a former client, Hallendry Removals and Storage.

Mandate

Maintain and replace the wagon-tracking and crew-rostering systems used by train planning.

Outcomes

• Replaced the wagon-tracking system in 2001 without a missed harvest train
• Built crew-roster checks against rest requirements into the planning tool
• Cut manual wagon-location queries to the control room by about half

Decisions in context

Brindlemoor hauled grain from country sidings to port and containers between regional terminals and Melbourne. I joined as a systems engineer maintaining the wagon-tracking system and became operations systems manager in 2001. My first harvest showed me how seasonal rail freight is. For half the year the timetable held; from November, trains ran to whatever the receival sites and the port could take, and the train planners needed answers within minutes. I led the replacement of the wagon-tracking system in 2001, timing the cutover for winter so that no harvest train depended on an untested system. I also worked with crew managers to build rest requirements into the rostering tool, so that a plan breaking them could not be published. That idea of putting the rule inside the system, rather than in a manual, has shaped my work since.

Reason for the move

Moved into consulting to work across a wider range of transport businesses.

Mandate

Install and commission radio and early satellite-tracking equipment in commercial vehicle fleets.

Outcomes

• Commissioned tracking units across fourteen carrier fleets
• Wrote the installation and testing checklist adopted for all fleet projects
• Ran driver briefings on radio and tracking use at client depots

Decisions in context

I joined Pelorvane straight from my engineering degree. The work was practical: fitting radios and, from 1995, some of the first satellite-tracking units bought by Victorian carriers, then testing them in the yard and on the road. I learnt quickly that equipment which worked perfectly could still fail in use. A driver who was called every twenty minutes unplugged his radio; an owner who received hourly positions had no idea what to do with them. I began running short briefings at client depots on what the equipment was for and when dispatch should and should not call. Those briefings were not in my job description, but the engineering manager adopted them after complaints fell. I left wanting to understand the systems that decided where vehicles should go, which led me to rail scheduling.

Reason for the move

Joined a rail freight operator to work on the systems that planned movements, not just the equipment that reported them.