AMAF Maturity Assessment and Improvement Roadmap for Westernport Water

Overview

Westernport Water (WPW) is a Victorian water corporation that provides water and wastewater services to a population of approximately 20,000 people in the Bass Coast region. The organisation manages over $300 million worth of assets, including dams, treatment plants, pipelines, pumps, meters, and valves. As a regulated water utility, WPW operates within the requirements of the Victorian Government's Asset Management Accountability Framework (AMAF), which mandates that asset-intensive organisations regularly assess and demonstrate their asset management maturity.

SAS Asset Management was engaged to conduct a comprehensive AMAF assessment and, during the assessment process, to identify strategic improvement opportunities that would meaningfully uplift WPW's Asset Management System (AMS) and service delivery capabilities.

The Challenge

Victorian water corporations face a dual challenge: they must demonstrate compliance with AMAF requirements while simultaneously ensuring their asset management practices are practical, effective, and proportionate to their organisational context. For a regional water authority like Westernport Water, this means balancing regulatory expectations with the realities of a smaller workforce and limited specialist resources.

While WPW's maturity assessment showed the organisation scoring threes and fours on the maturity scale and compliant across all mandatory requirements, the assessment revealed opportunities for further improvement. Specifically:

• The Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP) contained non-strategic objectives, making it difficult to maintain focus on what mattered most.
• Emergent activities and reactive renewals were consuming priority that should have been directed toward higher-value strategic initiatives.
• Major initiatives were not being well articulated within the AMS documentation.
• Risk management processes were not fully integrated into day-to-day decision making.
• The AMS document set contained duplication and conflicting content, reducing workforce understanding and adoption.

Our Approach

AMAF Maturity Assessment

SAS-AM conducted the AMAF assessment with a focus on the five AMAF principles for service delivery: integrated into planning frameworks; considerate of assets' whole life cycle; based on informed decision making; managed with responsibility and accountability; and considerate of government policies and priorities.

Our assessment was conducted through a stakeholder engagement and opportunity generation process that involved WPW leadership in the Assets and Operations department. Two workshop sessions a week apart enabled deep exploration of each improvement area, with further development occurring between sessions.

Three Strategic Improvement Opportunities

Three specific areas of improvement emerged from the assessment process:

1. AMS Strategy Development

We identified the need for a dedicated Asset Management System strategy to inform the SAMP. While WPW leadership demonstrated strong vision and direction, there was an opportunity to more clearly define and leverage this within the organisational context. The AMS strategy would focus on the structured improvement of processes and systems used to manage assets, providing a clear understanding of where improvement effort should be directed. This was expected to be developed through a series of focused workshops with key personnel over several weeks.

2. Line of Sight Model

SAS-AM recommended the creation of a line-of-sight model linking customer commitments to asset and asset management performance. This model would describe the stakeholder landscape and performance requirements of the AMS, the systems of assets, and the assets themselves. It would help all internal stakeholders understand how their daily activities contribute to the broader performance outcomes and community value that WPW delivers.

The line-of-sight model was designed to use customer performance parameters to inform organisation performance targets and ultimately asset performance targets, be consistent with ESC Pricing Submission and Customer Charter language, and be included early in the Asset Management Plan to set strategic context.

3. AMS Document Set Simplification

Upon reviewing the full AMS document set, including the Asset Management Policy, Strategic Asset Management Plan, Asset Management Improvement Plan, and Climate Adaptation Plan, we identified significant opportunities to streamline content and reduce administrative burden. Key recommendations included condensing the Asset Management Policy to a single page for noticeboard consumption, consolidating Asset Management Plans into one document removing duplication, incorporating the Risk Management Framework and Maintenance Management Framework as chapters within the AMP, and managing AMAF and ISO compliance through appendix tables rather than embedding regulatory language throughout the documents.

Results

Clear Improvement Roadmap

WPW received a prioritised improvement roadmap deliverable within an approximately six-month implementation timeframe. The three opportunities were designed as sequential activities where each informs the next: the AMS Strategy sets direction, the Line of Sight Model provides the performance framework, and the Document Set Simplification brings everything together in a lean, practical system.

Strengthened AMAF Compliance

The assessment confirmed WPW's compliance across all mandatory AMAF requirements while identifying practical pathways to move from compliance to genuine effectiveness. The improvement opportunities were designed to demonstrate maturity in Leadership and Accountability under AMAF.

Pragmatic and Right-Sized Outcomes

The recommended outcomes were specifically designed for a regional water authority. Rather than proposing enterprise-scale frameworks, SAS-AM focused on delivering a pragmatic, lean, and effective Asset Management System where vision is clear and structured, asset-related work is linked directly to customer and community performance expectations, processes and systems are right-sized, and compliance is embedded without creating unnecessary administrative burden.

Empowered Internal Capability

The improvement programme was designed to be led by WPW's own Asset Planning team, with the Senior Engineer Asset Strategy taking a 50% effort lead role and the AMIS Coordinator contributing 35% of effort. This business-led approach ensures that knowledge and capability are retained within the organisation, with external support providing experience and expertise to complement internal delivery.

Why This Engagement Matters

Regional water authorities play a vital role in delivering essential services to communities across Victoria. These organisations often manage substantial asset portfolios with proportionally smaller teams than their metropolitan counterparts. Getting the balance right between regulatory compliance, operational effectiveness, and resource efficiency is critical.

At SAS-AM, we understand that good asset management for a regional water authority looks different from what it looks like for a large metropolitan utility. Our approach focuses on delivering practical, proportionate improvements that build genuine capability and create lasting value for both the organisation and the communities it serves.