Adapt Solutions successfully delivered a real-time valuation software solution

Adapt Solutions recently helped a local government body achieve the systemisation of their asset valuation process. Traditionally, not enough time goes into the accuracy of the data and process producing an asset valuation. Adapt and their client has shown that the financial implications of not being robust in this process to be immense. Adapt’s client now benefits from the following.

1. The council now has the ability to produce subsequent valuations in real-time directly from Adapt software. In the past this was achieved on duplicated data outside of core asset systems.
2. The council has tightly coupled the Adapt valuation model to their asset inventory. Council can exploit any of the asset attribute, condition or work management data available. Attributes can then factor in the valuation formulas as did dewatering and asset surface cover in this valuation. Council now has the ability to trial the inclusion of different attributes into the valuation model as data becomes available. There is no limit to this. In the past this could not occur as the valuations were performed on a copy of data containing a limited profile of attribute information.
3. The valuation can be replicated. In the past it would have been difficult to reproduce a valuation run. The outputs rarely contained all the inputs that factored in the valuation formulas. From an auditing and transparency point of view this made it difficult to trace a valuation output back to its data state at the time the valuation was derived. Council and Adapt has improved this practice. The 2011 valuation output in its raw form contains all the building blocks (inputs) used to actually derive the outputs (replacement costs, depreciation, etc). This means any asset in the valuation can be viewed as it was at the time the valuation was struck.
4. For the first time council has introduced a systemised approach to managing unit rates (replacement costs) and expected life values. This data is now stored in Adapt software.  Any change made to these values is tracked in the software and reportable. If council decides to increase a unit rate, say PVC-U increase by $10/m, then this is captured in a managed way and the change is written to a history log. Then the next time a certified valuation is struck under this improved approach council will be able to report on ‘change’, not only change in terms of asset additions, deletions and expiry but also change in unit rates when compared to prior valuations. Following completion of the 2011 valuation, procedures have been completed to ensure a transparent method of explaining change from one valuation to another is available.
5. Council has introduced business rules in the Adapt software to manage when an asset record is added or updated. These rules help to enforce greater integrity into the data being captured, i.e. forcing a diameter attribute to be picked from a defined list. These business rules allow council to rely on the fact the asset inventory is being kept up to standard which enables a valuation to be struck at anytime, thus avoiding the need to address data gaps reactively in order to produce a valuation.

Adapt Solutions successfully delivered a real-time valuation software solution.  The solution now provides Council with the ability to model changes in asset age (quality, condition etc.), installation characteristics (depth, groundwater, material etc.) and physical contractor replacement value. The solution provides financial reporting for over 70 networks, linked direct to council’s main financial database with substantive additional details including multi-level renewals data.