Contractor Collaboration for Effective Asset Management

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today. My name is Robin. For anyone who hasn't met me, I'm gonna be presenting with Christian today. I'll introduce this a bit more, shortly. And today, we're gonna be talking about effective contractor interactions and how to get the best results from that. Just a bit of housekeeping that, our marketing, team, our marketing wizards have given me just to let you know. We do love your questions and comments. There's a QA function on your screen. If you have a lot look, at the screen you're looking at right now, there's a a q and a function, and you can drop in any questions that you wanna ask during the session. We have got time at the end to discuss them. But for example, if I'm speaking, Christian's gonna keep an eye on the q and a. And if Christian's speaking, I'll keep an eye on it, and we might, answer some as we go along as well. So don't be afraid to to drop all of your questions in there. You can pre read our very cringey presenter bios if you want to. There's an icon on your screen for that as well. And you can also click on your screen to to ask us for any demos or or any contact that you'd like to have with us after this session. So, just to introduce us a bit further, I'm Robin Dilnott. I'm a principal consultant with Brightly Software. I've been with the organization, for a good long while. And with me today is Christian. Do you wanna introduce yourself real quick? Yes. Thanks, Robin. So, yeah, Christian Melinda. I've been with the company now for, just over five years. Long background in asset management, within local government, prior to to joining the company. Thanks, Robin. No worries. So what we're gonna talk about today really is is all about kind of why we use external contractors, what the benefits are, and and, how we can go about making sure that we interact with our contractors in a way that then facilitates the best possible outcomes for us. So let's talk a little bit about why, people use external contractors often. Well, there's a lot of different reasons, but what it generally comes down to is the need for data collection. You know, a lot of the time, our external contractors, having them do our data collection for us, we might not have the the, person power that we may need. We might not have, the time to go around and collect our own data. Sometimes it helps us to access that external expertise as well. So data collection is a big one. That's a big reason that we use a lot of external contractor support. Basic maintenance and specialized maintenance as well. Again, Christian's gonna talk about trends, in a short while, so I don't wanna tread on his toes. But there is a trend towards external contractors for things like maintenance just for the simple fact that, again, it takes a lot of the responsibility away from our organizations, and can really help us to to make sure we've got those specialists in place when we need them. Defect collection is another one. If you just want someone to sweep through your, environment and collect any defects they can see, we may not have the time internally. We might not have the person power that we may need. You know, we're all trying to do, a bit more with a bit less, and sometimes to just have someone run through and collect all of those defects for us and potentially do our condition assessments as well, can really just, be quite convenient to not have to worry about doing that ourselves. And the benefits, some of these I've already touched on, really. The benefits of external contractors, we can shift the responsibility. And when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about shifting the responsibility for things like sick leave, managing vacations of a large skilled workforce when we can access a skilled workforce externally, all of that responsibility for organizing everyone, figuring everybody out, making sure the people with the skills are in the right place at the right time, that goes away from us. We just say, this is what we need, person, mister contractor, missus contractor. Please go and do that for us. Here is a contract to go and do those things. Everything's signed and sealed, and at that point, they can get on with it. So being able to access a very skilled workforce without having to pay those people to stay with us full time when they might not be needed all of the time, can be a really, a real benefit here. Doing more with less, again, paying once or twice to get that work done rather than paying for a fully skilled workforce all of the time to stay with us. That can be a really, good way to do more with less. The other thing is the admin overhead as well. The administration overhead of having to update all of those jobs, all of that work, create the work, get someone to do the work, keep an eye on any bits of paper that might be flying around, keep an eye on anything that might be sitting in the system that needs your attention. If you're creating that work and then somebody else is picking it up, downloading it, doing it, then updating it themselves, shifting that away from your organization, that administration overhead is a massive, benefit to using, an external contractor. So what I've done is I've just got a little poll question in here, and, hopefully, you'll be able to click the answer on your screen. So what we'd like to know is, are you currently engaging with internal or external contractors? I'm just gonna I'll give you give you twenty or thirty seconds to to have a to have a go at giving an answer. I think that's probably long enough, Christian, do you think? Yeah. That's that's, let's see the results. Seventy one percent have responded. So let's have a look. Alright. So there's only one point nine percent of our attendees that have answered the question today who aren't, currently engaging with contractors. So this is a a big this is a big subject that everybody, kind of needs to to get involved with, and there's there's the proof, really. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hand over to, Christian now, and he's gonna talk about the trends and patterns of of what's going on. Yeah. Thanks for that, Robin. Yeah. So some of the trends and things that, you know, we're we're noticing out there talking to our clients and, that we're experiencing, things that are coming through in our tenders. So, increase in in, vendors or, clients wanting integrated systems. So some of our clients do have separate contract management systems, separate to their asset management systems. So with that, you know, a contract system can record things such as work permits, qualifications, compliance certifications, all of those sorts of things. So that that information, is being integrated. For for instance, you know, in our Citic Cloud platform. We have some clients, courts courts Victoria, who do integrate. And when they go in to select someone to do a work order, that person, is actually validated in their contract system, making sure they've got the correct permits and that they are currently valid and licensed. If not, our system actually blocks them from from doing work. A confirmed system, so that actually has a a built in module to actually monitor or and manage those permits and qualifications. So, yeah, some of those things are are really starting to take off. So, also, we're having an increase of contractors using our systems or using our client systems, so both in the confirmed and aesthetic worlds. So we have done some development, in recent times, especially in the aesthetic cloud to support the use of, those contractors using our system. So more so in the, the the smaller sort of contract space, where it's sort of, you know, a sort of five to ten sort of, business size. If we're talking larger corporations, we're seeing more of the the requirements for business to business data synchronization. So that's when a contractor might have their own technology or own systems in place. And they have, you know, they're dispatching work in their own systems, and they're just pushing information back at the end, to to obviously record that transaction in our system. We're also noticing an uptake in in artificial intelligence, in both management of contracts and checking data. So, you know, there is AI powered contract analytics now, which is available. So you can leverage machine learning and algorithms. Business can get businesses can gain valuable insights, into their contract data. AI can also identify trends, risks, and opportunities, which may go unnoticed. So, you can train AI bots and and build those algorithms, to validate data also, which are provided by contractors. So Robin's talked about some of those use cases of data. So, you know, if someone's out collecting condition data, you can validate a lot of that stuff now using AI. So you don't need any manual intervention or manual checking. Even some of our, some of the things out there in the industry where you can train, AI bots to to look at photos and against, analyze defects in photos and and rank those defects. So you can do some data cross validation and checking even from photos. So, again, that, reduces some of the work that that needs to be done, I guess, back in the office in that post processing. So really, can be used to to speed up, some of that stuff. So AI is is still quite new. It is evolving very quickly marketplace, and we think that will be, probably, the next big thing in the asset management, space. So I'll pass back to to Robin. Okay. So I just wanted to, have a few words really about engaging with contractors for the best outcome and and kind of how that begins and and how to kind of make it happen. So one of the first things really, when you're thinking about engaging with contractors for the best outcomes, and this is really about those external contractors. It's all about engaging at the very beginning of that process. So if you don't have the, communication methods and the engagement methods with the contractors in the tender and then having that end up as part of the contract, It it's really vital that it starts right at the very beginning. So if you want the APIs or a file swap or if you want the contractors to be using mobile, devices that you supply to update your work, it's absolutely vital that that is part of the tender and part of the contractual process, because it helps you to establish the centralization and the ownership of the knowledge. Having establishment of that centralization and ownership of the knowledge where everybody can access the knowledge that they need at all times in the same place, is just really, important for being able to have up to the minute reporting, almost like a live view of what's going on outside in your environment, and to be able to work towards that single point of truth for your, for your asset. Ninety percent of what we do with our contractors and with our asset register and the way we, act in our organization should be aimed towards working towards that single point of truth all the time. We wanna be able to go to our system. We wanna be able to go to our source of knowledge and say, where is this asset at? How much does this asset cost us this year, every year, average per year, over the last ten years? When's it going to need to be replaced? How much, you know, defects has it had? How much does it cost us in time, not just in, money? And is it living up to its, end of the bargain? Should we replace it early? Should we? You know? Should we? Should we? Should we? We need to be able to look at that data and use it for our effective planning. For the best success that we found, across the board when we're dealing with our customers, we've always found the best success is when we offer multiple options for supplying and receiving information. But that is all about making sure that regardless of which option the contractor chooses or that you prefer to choose with your contractor, that information all ends up in the same place. So it doesn't matter whether you use, a contractor portal or an API, some file swapping, manual file swapping, whatever, or if you've got your contractors using mobile devices that directly access your system, all of that should end up with the information in the same place. It should all go back to the same place without manual intervention from you. And that's really kind of the the things to keep in mind when engaging with the contractor is to ensure that that is enshrined in the tender process and then therefore becomes part of the contract, for that best outcome. So let's talk about, I've got another little poll question here. So let's talk about who has communication methods, the system usage, for contractors written into the tender documents or contract. Who has that with their contracts team where their contracts team will always talk to them and make sure that it's written into the contract. So I'll just give you a few more seconds. Okay. That's a pretty good response there. Yeah. So that was an amazing response. That was nearly everybody there that responded. And only sixty two percent of you have communication methods or system usages, in the tender documents and the contract. So it's something that we find generally does need work, when we're talking to our customers. And it's something that is a it's constant. It's a constant, a constant interaction. It's a constant, thing that we should be working on. So let's talk about the system interaction versus manual interaction, and this is this is why it's so important that we start at the very beginning and we work on it from the very beginning of our engagement with the contractor and why we should always keep it in mind. If we think about our manual interaction where we might be sending a job to the contractor, whether I mean, I do still have a couple of customers who use fax machines for this stuff. Most people do use email now. You do find the occasional, you know, hidden office that still faxes things. But it creates, a situation whereby you're sending information to the contractor manually. They're sending things back manually. You then have to type that into the system to say that the work is finished or that the asset has been condition surveyed, or here is a defect, and I'm going to type it in. And it just creates this double entry of information with a really high administration overhead, and you have so many opportunities for typos, errors where I might pop it against the wrong asset because the information I've been given, is textual, and it might not be quite clear enough. And it could also have this backlog of tasks because the user has to react to each and every task, and that takes up time. And it's quite easy if I have a bit of a cold or like I had a few weeks ago. I had COVID, and I had a week and a half off work. That would have created, if I was in this situation, a massive backlog of tasks, potentially defects in our environment that weren't being, that weren't being entered into the system and, therefore, weren't being fixed because nobody knew about them. You know, I've just got a big pile of things in my inbox that need dealing with and just are sitting there. So you have this high, high opportunity for single points of failure, and it's one of the things everybody should always, attempt to, get rid of. You know, they should be eliminated. Single points of failure should be eliminated as much as possible in any system, manual, automated, or otherwise. So let's talk about system interaction then. So if you have partial or fully automated information entry, so you might be swapping files with a contractor. You might be, using APIs to, communicate directly between two systems using an integration. You could just have the contractor updating their own jobs or using a mobile device. You've still got that partial automated information entry, and it's just one single point of information entry. So you have a very low or sometimes no administration overhead for the person within our local government organization. The manual errors shrink to almost nothing because we're not having double or triple information, entry into multiple systems. The user only then has to react to exceptions. So I might be sitting there. I might get an error message to say, oh, this file's failed. Okay. Well, I'll react to that. But the three hundred jobs before that, they all came in, or the three hundred inspections and the defects and everything else that we've been asking the contract to do, you know, that's already done. I don't have to react to those. I've had to have almost nothing to do with them. So at that point, if I have some sick leave or, you know, Christian going off fishing for the weekend or whatever we like to do, it's very low risk. Okay? And the opportunity for those, kind of small documented tasks that anyone can do, really, that's that's the only, point of failure that might exist at that point, is is that if, somebody loses or doesn't have access to the document I've written that says, if you get an error whilst I'm away or whilst Christian's out fishing on his boat, this is what you do about it. And and that's the sort of thing that anyone can do, and lots of people can help with. So really, let's let's look at this as just a rough downside and a rough upside. Okay? If we have manual interaction, so we don't have those integrations and all of those things written in from the very beginning, you know, the downside is the onboarding process can be quite complex if you've got contracts that are already in action, because you have to negotiate them. And it can be lengthy. You know, when we go in to see customers and when they're a new customer and we're rolling out aesthetic or we're rolling out confirm, we've got contracts that are already in motion. Okay? And if you've got something like a four plus two or a three plus one, and the contractor is very established, they have their own way of doing things, and they're a large contractor. Sometimes the best solution there is just to wait it out. It's just to wait the four years. So bit by bit, you can then start to onboard your contractors as contracts are renewed. So this could be a long process. But the upside is that once it's done, all of that manual interaction, all of that administration overhead, all of that risk overhead starts to minimize. And the real upside here is to onboard these contractors if you're using confirm or aesthetic and many, many other systems as well, you've probably already got everything you could possibly need in order to achieve this. If you're using confirm or aesthetic, you've got APIs already that you can use. You've got contractor portals that you can use. You've got file swapping that is available within the system that you can already use, and you have mobile working that you can issue to a contractor. So it's not actually gonna cost you any money. You don't have to purchase any new tools. You've got everything you need already. Lovely. I think there's a question on off to the side. Oh, cool. You can answer this one. So Paul's asked if, if it is a feature, or possibly should be a feature, whether canned responses can be, I guess, built into our mobile apps such as MadeSafe with Coldmix. So I'm guessing if you're doing a road or pothole, that's definitely is the case with the aesthetic mobile. So Yes. Confirm has, a comment library. Typing. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, obviously, one of the benefits of, having a contractor use our system is that, you know, they can pick those pick lists that we've defined for them, so they're not picking values which which are irrelevant or don't make sense to you to you as an organization. So you can actually report on that data. So yeah. Thanks, Paul. Definitely. Question. Great question. Okay. So I'm gonna hand over to Christian again, and he's gonna talk to you about, the asset management life cycle. Yeah. Thanks for that, Robin. So I know Robin had some of these points on one of our slides earlier. I'm just gonna go into a bit more detail around how, contractors can be engaged across pretty much the whole AM life cycle. So so the contractors can be used to collect new or validate existing asset data. So, if you're doing a revaluation of your your asset stock, do you want to wipe your data out and start again, or do you wanna validate existing data? So, obviously, you you might need to to talk to all of your stakeholders across your organization to define your data needs. You know, contractors can capture both asset attribute information and spatial information. Also, as part of that, collection, it's important that the contractor has a specification or a standard, in which they need to align their data capture with, to ensure that all of your stakeholders get the data that they need. So I have seen it with many clients before. They've gone out, got data collected, gone to do reevaluation. That's fine. They've gone to do some modeling on that, bicycle modeling, and the data hasn't been fit for purpose or hasn't been, they haven't defined what they want. Or they're missing one attribute that they need to value that asset, whether it be length, width, whatever it may be. So ensuring that those standards are defined. Also, condition assessment or defect, assessments can also be collected by a contractor, and that's often, able to get that information together. So if you're looking at an asset, you might want a condition assess it, but while you're there, you might want to get some defect information if it if there is a defect. So when I say defect, a defect can be defined in many different ways. So again, that probably does need to be specified in terms of what a defect is, and have some guidelines in terms of, you know, what constitutes a good condition or a bad condition or, you know, fair condition for an asset. So, also, if that defect data is captured, you know, how we're getting a works. Are we gonna put a works program together around that? If so, what are our intervention levels for that works program? So those are the sorts of things we see quite often contractors doing some of those activities or all of those activities. So just being aware that, you know, if you if you want a contractor to do all of that, that you'd have that well defined, and you're both working together to get the outcomes that you need. So in the maintenance space, obviously, you've got basic maintenance, you know, send your work work order out to one person. Do they come back, complete that job? It may be specialized maintenance, requiring specialized skill sets. So Robin sort of touched on this before in terms of, you know, having a specialized, I guess, skill set that you're paying someone to to to maintain or hold when they're only using that part of the time. Also, with that specialized skill set, sometimes you may wanna go out to a contract and also include the the management and responsibility and responsibility for defining, any preventative or maintenance programs as well. Sometimes the skill sets do lie with with some of the contractors out there, which can actually take on some of that, more of that management, of your asset base. And I guess one thing I haven't got on on that slide is that the total asset management, operate including the operations and maintenance of an asset industry where you'll see super contracts go out for maintenance of maintenance and operations of a facility. Those contracts, can be very, very, big with lots of considerations in them. Some of the things that you need to be mindful of, if you're giving the operations and maintenance out to a contract and we were relying on the contract to deliver all of that, you need to have your outcome specified. You also need to have roles and responsibilities defined. So, you know, if there's capital work to be done on that asset over that, life of that contract, who's responsible for it? What condition do you expect that asset to be handed back to you in when that contract is over? Who's doing the the capital works planning, all of those sorts of things. So, there's lots of little, things in there with, you know, you don't want to hand your asset over to someone to maintain for, say, five year contract and then get it back. And all they've done is the very basic maintenance and essentially run that asset into the grand and you get back a liability at the end of that. So it's very important to make sure that that's well defined. So alright. So to summarize, what we've been through today, so advancements we've seen a lot of advancements in technology and convergence of systems, which are making engaging with contracts or contractors easier. So multiple integration methods, can make that and communicating with contracts simple, make it low risk activity and reduce that overhead. So Robin talked about, you know, some of the double handling and and all of those sorts of things, you know, the timeliness, the getting of information, Paul's example there as well, you know, in in terms of making sure you're getting the right data back from from your contractor. I've got a question here as well. I'll I'll jump in and and answer. So, Nathan, back on that last slide, what's the difference between condition, versus a defect assessment? So a condition might just be going at it and saying, well, this is in fair condition one to five or whatever you've specified. Just getting that information back. If you're asking for a defect assessment, you might be asking to rank the type of defect it is. So if it's a a road, you might say it's got three potholes of x diameter. It's got x amount of cracking on that section of road as opposed to just saying it's in a fair condition or a poor condition and needs work. So, again, defect, obviously, is putting a a list of defects together with that and probably ranking those defects to some extent to actually end up with a works program or potentially a works program at the end of that. So, yeah, there is a slight difference there. My advice, if you're doing one, you probably wanna do both, get a lot more out of it while the contractor's there. Also, summarise, so to be successful, our contract clauses must specify, things like, you know, we we want a contractor to use our system. We've gotta have that in our contract now. That's not always easy to do. Some of our clients you know we've rolled out some of this functionality in our applications. Some of our clients do want to roll it out. However they have standing contracts in place which have clauses in them which can't be changed for set periods of time. So you might need to let those contracts expire before you renew them with amended clauses and so on. You need to also ensure the data requirements are specified and your outcomes of what you want from that contract are included in there as well. So, obviously, you you wanna have a collaboration and a good relationship, with that contractor. And you guys probably, you know, if you're using assistance, you probably do have a lot of what you have, essentially need to get started. You know, there is a lot of things if you dig into some of the detail on what we've talked about today. A few things to probably unpack there. But, yeah, go to the next slide. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions or hopefully there'll be a lot of questions. So, we'll pass it over to yourselves to me and Robin will sit here and answer anything that that you throw at us. Thank you. So I've had we've had one question, put in already. It was sent into me earlier, so I hope nobody minds. It wasn't it wasn't thrown in the q and a box. Can you give us an example of customers that have contractors Yeah. Sure, Robin. Look. Yeah. Sure, Robin. Look, a a really good example of mine that I've worked with, a fair bit in recent time is is Redland Council. They do use our, mobile application to, I guess, give work to the to their contractors, and they've got a lot of contractors that they've actually onboarded. So as their contracts are up for renewal, they are amending clauses in their contracts. They're engaging and getting the contractors onboarded. So they actually a a person within their organization that part of their role is actually onboarding contractors. They do have some, user guides and manuals that they have written for those contractors. In that in that case, the mobile application is actually free download, so so, contractors can download that. They've got those user guides and they do have that support person there. They're actually published on their Internet page as well. So that's one example of a a client of ours that's that's, you know, making use of of the functionality and doing a really good job, and are seeing a lot of efficiencies and benefits from doing so. Yeah. Thank you. And I'll pass back to you, Robin. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So my best example of that would be, City of Sydney, who, from the very beginning of, implementation of Confirm, went about starting, integrations, discussions with their contractors. And they have, at least, I think, twenty or so now different contractors either using mobile devices, having an integration with Confirm where they're actually user utilizing the API or file swapping to, you know, swap information on work that needs to be done and work that has been completed, or they've got contractors logging on to the portal to to download and and and update their own work. And they're utilizing that with a lot of contractors, but the more important thing is they're utilizing all of the different methods based on, you know, the size of the contractor, the kind of work that they're doing, and and how far they were through the contract when they started, to implement the system with them. And then, obviously, they are one of the customers we have that makes sure it's actually in the tender document that they have to use, or integrate with their asset system. So they're a really good example of how to do it well. Lovely. Just see another couple questions here as well, Robin. So from Paul statement from Paul. You just mentioned we've modified brightly upload files, contractors to be filled out in lieu of an or in lieu of an automated solution or mobile tool. Worked very well. Yeah. So, obviously, our system is flexible, in terms of if you wanna bring that data in, or use our APIs or use our mobile applications. There is various avenues you can explore there. That's really good good feedback. That's a great comment. Thank you for that, Paul. Lots of flexibility there. So yeah. No. That's that's great that you guys are are making use of that. And, also, Graham has asked, can you please demonstrate how Confirm can be used for different models of communicating with contractors? So how do you, Robin? So we didn't, prepare demonstrations today. Today is all about information and discussion. If anybody does want demonstrations of things like, APIs, portals, all of that stuff, we can arrange that for a later date. No worries. So I'll note that one down, and and we'll we'll be in touch. Lovely. Any other questions? Oh, here's a good one. Christian, here we go. There's another one that's been messaged through to me. Do you you can answer this one. Actually, you'll be good at this. What are the dangers of outsourcing the total asset management of an asset or a network of assets? So outsourcing the whole life cycle. That's a good question. Yeah. That's a that's a really good one, Robin. Thanks a lot. I I kind of touched on it, but I didn't didn't go into detail. Obviously, if if you're giving everything over to a contractor, if that obviously, there's there's potential issues if that contractor goes broke or doesn't deliver. How do you recover from that? But, also, if if that contractor is managing the the total life cycle of that, how are they gonna hand that back? I think that's what I I mentioned. You know? They've got it from a five year contract. At the end of the five years, what state will that asset come back in to you in? So you've got to not only give that contract out to that person, it's gotta be monitored and managed. So there is still an overhead for your organization. Even if you've given something to a contract, you still need to monitor that contract, be aware of all the conditions of that contract. And if you have people in your own organization that leave, that are managing that contract, that knowledge transfer has to happen, to make sure that contract is still on track and performing as you would expect. So I did mention things like AI and so on. You could, you know, monitor data and inputs from that contract using, you know, automated tools, but there there's still a lot of a lot of manual stuff that needs to happen there. Also, it's a that would be a huge contract, especially if, you know, you're outsourcing, something like a total operation of a whole network of of assets. I have to give you an example on the Gold Coast and where I'm from, Gold Coast Council or Gold Coast Water. They outsourced a large, bit of of maintenance, potentially we'll call us almost call a super contract. So, you know, they've got contracts in place that manage, their waste facilities center, everything from operating that center to maintaining it, cleaning it, all of that sort of stuff. And they're large contracts, obviously, contracts which have year on year sort of, renewals, but, you know, that has to be monitored to make sure that contract is performing for that contract renewal to come through. So obviously if you're pushing something out that's that big you might want to make sure you've got those stage gates in place. And those clauses where you get out of the contractor or contract if that contractor is not performing. And data as well. So if that contract is collecting data, at the end of the contract, you would probably want some of that data back at some point. So you wanna still have ownership of that. You wanna know what's happened to that asset over its last cycle. You don't want that information to go missing, and you don't want the contractor at the end of the contract to hold that over you that they've got that information and you don't. So a few things to consider there as well. Hope that sort of covered that, Robin. That's a great answer. Perfect. So, Jackie would like to know, does the API cater for photos? Now I know that the confirm API does. It allows contractors to supply photos. Christian, I think Yeah. Yeah. Does. I can't I'm trying to do two sets of documentation in my head. Yes. Yes. It does. You can push photos. We do have what's called a document API. So you can push documents through as part of that as well. Lovely. So, yes, to both. Something for technical people. Yeah. Yep. And that might be something you you might will kind of be doing that business to business sort of larger integration where you're pushing just Yep. A whole bunch of work information back into your system, and you want photos and that to come well. Great question. The before and after photo is becoming a bit gold dust, gold standard. Right? So, yeah, It's it's really important that we allow contractors to supply those. Correct. So we'll just we'll just leave a couple more minutes for people to ask any questions, that they would like to ask. And please remember, their only stupid question is the question that you didn't ask. So or can I please have sweets before dinner? Because that's always no, and that is a stupid question. But other than that, please ask all the questions. We're quite happy to answer anything. Is it here's one from here. And how can we effectively write contract that are flexible around whether client application or b two b data APIs are used without leaving risks in terms of technical implementation and integrations. So I guess if you're doing that, I'll things into your contract, you wanna make sure the systems and things or APIs that you have do support that before you essentially, engage that contractor or you sign any documentation. You wanna make sure that it is possible to do what you want to do before engaging or signing off that five year deal and then it all falling over. For example, you know, our our software, we do have those APIs. They're they're openly published. You know, clients can access that and see see how our systems work and see what information is needed for the API to perform. Now, obviously, whoever's doing that integration work, whether you engage, brightly to do that or you have a third party vendor or you're doing that as your own your own internal resources. Some organizations do do prefer to do that. Some some companies or organizations do engage us to do that. So, yeah, we do work across multiple vendors quite often. You know, we're we're talking about data exchange and what information is needed from one vendor to satisfy the requirements in our system. So making sure that that's specified upfront and a good understanding of that's had before you even, I think, go down that path. So it's a good question, Kieran. Absolutely. And just to answer your question, Ning, do we have samples of specification documents? If you are a confirmed user, the documents are available in your help files. If you can't find them, just let one of us know, and we will make sure you have a copy on your email ASAP, and aesthetic the same. If you can't find them, let one of us know, and we will make sure you have a copy of them. You can let the help desk know. You can let one of us know. It doesn't matter. Yep. And it's the same with our, you know, our aesthetic product. We do have all of our APIs and stuff published and documentation around how our system works and its requirements. I guess if you're trying to put that into tender spec though, you know, that's something we could help you with if if you wanted to engage us to to go down that path. David's just written in a question. With an API integration, what do you define live data to be? That's actually Oh, I'd love it to be up to the minute, like the stuff that happened ten seconds ago. But live data really I mean, if you've got contractors using mobile devices, sometimes you can get data that was done ten seconds ago. Generally, if it's if it's, less than twenty four, forty eight hours old, that's a pretty nice, you know, view of your environment and a view of your streetscape. If you've got contractors updating, data in the system and and sending files. Some of our customers define that as the contractor has to give us the the data once a week, and they consider that to be live data. So, you know, it's up to it's up to you and what you've specified and what you've agreed with your with your contractors. Yeah. I'll probably add to that as well. It depends, yeah, exactly what data you're talking about. You know, using our static mobile app, for instance, and the guys are out there working, you're you're getting that data back. You know, when they're hitting the button, it synchronizes. It's the time it takes to send that packet of data across to the cloud. So with cloud computing and APIs, it can be very current, your data. Just depends on what how often you need that integration to run. If it's, oh, we're just getting periodic data back, it might be daily or weekly from a contractor. If it's something like an integration with a SCADA or a monitoring system, you might want that data pretty much when an event happens or something happens if you need to get out there to action that. So, you can build your integration or APIs to to, I guess, suit your needs. With the, I guess, everything becoming cloud based now, it is pretty, you know, depending on your requirements, you can have that data pretty quickly. And Kieran has asked a question. I think the challenge we've seen that seems possible under complexities when we try it, but but then it's too late to change the approach. Yeah. That's look look, that's something that, you know, I mentioned before. You definitely and make sure that's tested and and ready to go before you essentially sign that agreement. So it is, you know, it is an investment in time and and money before you sign the know, it is an investment in time and and money before you sign the dotted line. That is, you know, a risk and and that contractor may not have the systems in place on their end. So while we might, you know, have the APIs and everything on our end, a contractor might say yes, yes that's fine. Essentially to win that contract or that tender and then when it comes to, I guess, implementing that it will fall over. So you need to have those clauses in your contracts upfront to make sure that you can get out of that if needed. Yeah. And if you do need help with that, we do have a team of people that are dedicated to helping you with those kind of words around around the business requirements that are that are needed. And and, yes, I absolutely can send you the confirmed specifications. I will note that question down, and I will grab your contact details off of our, attendee list later on. No worries at all. Lovely. Thank you. Lovely. Done. Well, what do you think, Robin? We'll wrap it up there. I just want to say thank you to everyone who's attended and taking some time out of your day. I hope this has been of of value. Please do reach out, to Rob and myself, any of your account managers. Even if you wanna reach through to our support and ask them any questions about how any of our contractor functionality works, please do so. You know, we we are here to help. You know, we've got this great functionality in our products, and we do wanna see people using and leveraging that and essentially pushing us to be better as well and, you know, moving with some of those things and helping with the industry. Oh, Paul's just mentioned something here as well. Oh, hang on. It's also worth implementing context. Yeah. That's a great comment. Thank you for that, Paul. Something, like aspec, is a really useful, thing to to to have, as part of your vendor contract, and it just kind of helps you specify, the kind of the data, not just the format, but the content that needs to be sent to and from as well. Those are really good things to have. Thank you for that. Yeah. Real, really, really good. We just gotta also be mindful, though, with the specs. I mentioned before in terms of attribute data or spatial data. If you have an own internal standard, you know, if you need certain information for certain use cases such as valuations or whatever it might be, making sure that Aspec covers off on everything you need. Yeah. So making sure you've got every attribute you need to this format or perform that function. So, yeah, there are some good standards. Aspects one, you know, IPWEA had ADAC, and there's a few others out there. Yeah. Aspec, despec, all of those. So, yeah, some good stuff that's that's already been done in the industry, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel sometimes. It gives you a really good starting point. If you look at those standards, you may then wanna just build on that if there's, you know, that little bit extra that you need and include that in part of your spec when you go out to contract. Yeah. So I'll just take this opportunity to echo what Christian has said there. Thank you so much to everyone for making time for us today, and I hope that you found, what we've said useful. And anybody who would like to continue the conversation, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. You can get in touch with us, on email. You can hit the help desk up, and they'll pass you along to us. You can give us a a a call, and, and we're happy to continue the conversation. So thank you so much, everybody. For those that, yeah, that don't know who who I'll take yeah. Yep. Lovely. Alright. Thank you, everyone.