Overview
Stanwell is one of the top energy generators in Australia and is Queensland’s leading provider of electricity and energy solutions to the National Electricity Market.
With over 40 years of continuous operations, Stanwell maintains a reliable supply of power from two of the most efficient and reliable coal-fired power stations in Australia – the Tarong power stations near Kingaroy and Stanwell Power Station near Rockhampton. Stanwell’s head office is in Brisbane where Stanwell’s corporate divisions, Stanwell’s retail business – Energy Solutions as well as Stanwell’s Asset Maintenance Company (SAMCo) are based.
For the team of around 900 staff across all sites, technology and being connected is a vital tool. The company invested in a ‘modern workplace’ to enable greater collaboration and productivity at its Brisbane office with further plans across its other sites. For such a high-profile project, Stanwell needed a partner to provide the technology, manage a large-scale rollout and provide the training to give their teams the skills to use it to its full potential.
Challenge
As a growing company and one that needs to cater for the flexibility and movement of its staff across sites, Stanwell recognised its current corporate workspace needed a rethink.
Senior ICT Project Manager, Ali Cupitt said Stanwell carried out a workplace survey in 2023 with surprising results.
“We used sensors on desks for that survey and found that our desk utilisation was low,” Ms Cupitt said.
“What this told us was that we needed to be more effective with the use of our workspace and enable greater collaboration – so we set up a project to redesign our offices.
Stanwell went to the market for a partner who could not only supply the equipment needed, but who could manage the deployment and, crucially, provide the training that staff needed in order to feel comfortable with, and get the most out of their new tools.
Ms Cupitt said ASI put forward the best proposal to meet Stanwell’s needs.
“This included sourcing a training grant based on their partnership with Microsoft. We felt they were the partner we needed,” she said.
Solution
ASI provided a complete end-to-end solution, and took a consultative approach that ensured the whole project ran smoothly and seamlessly.
ASI managed the delivery schedule, over the course of 13 weekends – and Mitch was there for every single delivery. They brought in their partner Lifecycle Plus to remove all the old desktops and arrange recycling. Our IT team didn’t need to do anything before the equipment was put on the desk.”
The next stage was training, delivered by Mathew Gilbertson, leader of ASI’s Digital Skills and Productivity team. The approach was to run the training floor by floor, with between 20 and 50 participants each time, and the whole process being run 15 times. Ali said ‘each group’ would start with an induction onto the newly refurbished floor, then they’d receive their backpack of equipment and spend the rest of the day training.
“In the morning Mathew covered the Surface devices, Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 and how to use them to boost collaboration and productivity. In the afternoon, I covered the company specific processes and tools. Although everyone was in the building, we carried out some of the training on Teams, so that our staff could get practical experience of working online. After the training day, Matt showed the team where they could find the leave behind content in ASI’s Digital Skills Coach Platform, so they can refresh their skills at any time,” she said
Results
The project has been a resounding success. The staff at Stanwell are impressed with their Microsoft Surface devices, and particularly the ability to share and collaborate in documents using OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint.
“We’re going to start monitoring the number of service desk calls, fully expecting them to reduce due to the training the staff have had and the ease of use of their new equipment,” Ms Cupitt said.
Having successfully transformed the working environment at the Brisbane office; the next step will be to expand it out to the power station and mine sites.
Some of the key outcomes include:
