LHDA

Cohesive introduces IBM Maximo to enable integrated EAM & maintains system availability in remotest conditions

Africa’s largest water transfer scheme supplies the continent’s largest industrial complex and generates half of Lesotho’s electricity. Effective EAM in remote areas at 1,730m ASL, with an unreliable communication network, was problematic until Cohesive introduced a Maximo solution enabling integrated EAM even when networks are down.

Summary

LHDA required an EAM solution to manage the infrastructure of civil, water and electricity assets over remote sites above 1,730m ASL. Cohesive rolled out Maximo at all sites, integrating it with a centralized financial system. The unstable communication problem was overcome with a data replication approach that gives remote end-users a permanent connection to Maximo. This resulted in more efficient EAM of a project of critical importance for the well-being of Southern Africa.

Solutions

Enterprise Asset Management

The Challenge

Ensuring asset integrity and uninterrupted supply in Africa’s largest water transfer system, which generates 6.5% of Lesotho’s GDP and provides 40% of the water used in the Gauteng industrial heartland of South Africa, is of critical importance. Managing that bulk infrastructure in remote mountainous areas at least 1,730m above sea level (ASL) where minimum temperatures dip below 0°C for almost 100 days a year, is the challenge facing the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA).

To complicate matters, unreliable communication networks often de-link the remote sites not only from one another but also from the LHDA head office in Maseru.

LHDA:

Delivers 760 million m³/year from the massive Katse and Mohale Dams in the Maluti mountains through a series of tunnels and the Muela transfer dam to the industrial heartland of South Africa.
Generates annually 474.6 GWh (51% of Lesotho’s electricity) at the Muela’s hydro-electrical power station.

The 2023 royalties on the water transfer (ZAR 1.2 billion / USD 65 million) formed 6.5% of Lesotho’s GDP.

LHDA required an Enterprise Asset Management solution capable of managing the entire asset infrastructure of civil, water and electricity assets, distributed over remote sites at Muela, Katse and Mohale.

Our Solution

Cohesive was awarded a tender to roll out IBM Maximo as LHDA’s Enterprise Asset Management system over all their sites, integrating it into a centralized financial system. To minimize the problem of unstable communication, Cohesive proposed that Katse, Mohale and Muela should have business functionality of asset, work, inventory, and procurement management to be able to continue with their maintenance and procurement operations even when unable to connect to the server installed at Maseru.

A data replication concept – based on the latest IBM Maximo release – enables remote end-users to have a permanent connection to Maximo, even while network communication has been lost with the main server. Maximo was therefore installed at each site, ensuring process continuity when the networks are down with automatic replication when networks are restored.

All site-specific information from the centralized server is then replicated back to the sites. This solution provides seamless business operations on-site, independent of network stability.

The Client Benefits

Cohesive conducted with LHDA staff an Asset Identification and Verification project at all dam sites following a proof of concept that indicated not all assets were captured within Maximo.

LHDA has realized several key benefits including:

Optimum system availability when cross-country networks are down
Centralized reporting through replication
Integrated financial processes, documented, applied, and embedded
Financial reporting optimized
Paper-based requisitioning eliminated
Improved Inventory reports and KPIs
Improved material and spare parts management and planning
Requisitions managed in Maximo and interfaced with its Financial System
Receipts managed in Maximo to enable seamless business operations managed through data replication

Cohesive successfully introduced a replication solution that allows our end-users to continue working on the system when network connectivity is lost. As a result, system availability and resource utilisation has been optimised.

Reentseng Molapo

Divisional Manager Development & Operations

What’s Next

Cohesive views the next steps as critical:

A Risk and Criticality analysis of all assets
Integrating the dam integrity monitoring instruments in Katse – parallel laser precision monitoring – into the IBM Maximo system
Labelling of all newly identified assets
Review and optimization of Maintenance tasks
A classification project for all store items

Further development work is also ongoing, especially regarding extending the functionality of the mobile application.