CIO 100: KiwiRail

KIWIRAIL IS A New Zealand Government-owned enterprise which owns and operates New Zealand’s rail transportation network and the between-Island ferry service.

“KiwiRail is a large, busy and complex business,” says its CEO Peter Reidy.

KiwiRail’s infrastructure team maintains and upgrades 4,000 kilometers of rail corridor, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, overhead wires, signals and level crossings. It transports around 30 per cent of New Zealand’s exports, and provides 13 million passenger trips a year. It owns more than 1,500 property assets, around 1,230 of which are used to support business operations and the remainder being leased.

CIO Ed Overy says major ICT projects this year will cover freight operations systems, business intelligence, asset management and application consolidation.

“The focus is on rationalising the ICT spend to ensure best value.” The organisation is undergoing outsourcing or move to infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service for its systems which will result in significant savings, says Overy.

He says in the upcoming months the ICT team will work on further business intelligence programs and enhanced digital channels, as well as application consolidation.

He says the enterprise mobility program over the past year has delivered major improvements for the organisation.

Included in the mobility program is the deployment of a mobile field service management app developed by Certus.

Built on the IBM Mobile First platform, the app helps field staff perform inspections tasks, streamline their workf low and get day-to-day maintenance work completed quickly and efficiently. The app has reduced manual entry of paperwork, reduced administrative workload and potential errors through elimination of double entry of reports.