From Compliance Challenges to Thriving Communities: RetireAustralia's Journey to Effective Asset Management
RetireAustralia is a leading owner, operator, and developer of retirement villages with a focus on creating thriving communities where older Australians live the life they choose in their own home. It currently manages eight retirement villages across New South Wales and seven in Queensland. Its new villages are contemporary in design, integrated with the surrounding community, and have age-friendly features. RetireAustralia’s overarching vision is to "be a leading provider of integrated care and independent living communities for older Australians."
🛑 The challenge: trying to meet increasing compliance standards
As a business, RetireAustralia has three main areas of focus. It’s dedicated to providing an exceptional resident experience, it enables a nimble and empowered workforce, and it’s growing an optimal portfolio of retirement communities. But with legislation increasing in the aged care Retirement Living sector, RetireAustralia faced challenges in achieving compliance, managing actuals data, and maintaining a complete asset dataset.
Initially, RetireAustralia tried to achieve compliance internally but was unable to generate compliant reports. Initial maintenance forecast reports also didn’t align with budgets or internal management of villages, as Steve Gibbs, National Manager – Property, Assets & Facilities, RetireAustralia explains.
"There are increasingly strict requirements for asset compliance in Australia. We welcome these changes, as they align with our goals of providing an exceptional experience and optimising the assets we manage. But with our previous systems, based on Excel sheets and often incomplete information, it was very difficult to achieve compliance," Steve says.
RetireAustralia realised that finding a technology partner to help collect data and digitise its operations would be the best way forward to meet government requirements as well as its own business goals.
✅ The solution: moving from manual to digital with high-quality data
RetireAustralia already had an asset register, though it was incomplete and not fully up-to-date. AssetFuture began by ingesting this register, and RetireAustralia team used the AssetContinuity condition assessment app to capture missing data, and bring asset information up to date.
Following extensive data validation, AssetFuture then created the Area Hierarchy and asset register. RetireAustralia worked closely with AssetFuture’s team of experts to align the maintenance and repair tasks for the majority of their asset register. This included updating the cost, frequency, and type of activities that exist for an extensive list of assets.
"We were trying to manage Actuals data across seven villages that had limited WMS solutions in place. We’d never previously consolidated Actuals data, and had to create new business processes to achieve this reporting requirement," Steve says.
RetireAustralia transitioned from using Excel templates to a sophisticated asset management solution that provides lifecycle intelligence for all villages and their entire asset portfolios. They have also started exploring the use of AssetContinuity to keep asset data up-to-date in real-time, reducing resource inefficiencies.
🚀 The outcome: achieving and exceeding compliance
RetireAustralia went from struggling with compliance to achieving and exceeding compliance within two to three months. They now have reliable data that enables them to forecast and understand the cost, risk, and reliability of their asset portfolio across eight villages in New South Wales (NSW).
The project saw RetireAustralia successfully transition from manual processes to a fully digital asset management solution, providing lifecycle intelligence for all villages and asset portfolios. Ali Butterfield, one of RetireAustralia’s Administrator village managers, believes her and her team’s work has become much easier as a result.
"Through AssetContinuity we’ve can record real-time updates of maintenance data, which has reduced inefficiencies and enhanced our data integrity. We now have the data we need, and the platform and processes to generate insights from that data and manage our village much more easily and effectively," Ali says.
RetireAustralia now has visibility into its long-term maintenance schedules, achieving compliance and building trust with proactive maintenance inspections. Their partnership with AssetFuture has established a sense of trust and alliance, with plans to expand the scope to other villages and sites in Queensland and South Australia.
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“The partnership with AssetFuture has allowed us to achieve compliance, improve data quality, and build trust through proactive maintenance inspections. We now feel confident that we can continue to meet compliance now and in the future, and optimise our portfolio to get full lifecycle value from our assets - benefitting our business but more importantly, the lifestyle and comfort of our residents.”
“We’re working together, RetireAustralia and AssetFuture are excited to capture and assess additional assets that were not included in the initial data load. This will further improve RetireAustralia’s visibility of the cost, risk, and reliability of their entire asset portfolio as we continue to build this out.”