How has your work helped to improve the EBA?
The EBA Maintenance and Repair application needed to be, as any other ''out of the box'' application, adapted to the NCI Agency's way of working.
My contribution was to develop the necessary workflows, which clearly indicated the different maintenance processes. This was done in an excellent cooperation with the CSSC teams (Resource Management, Asset Management and Engineering and Maintenance), the support of the Service Support and Business Application Service Line and the contractor. Additional administrative tasks on any engineering and maintenance team should be kept to a minimum, because they should be focused on their core technical tasks. However, data is important for business intelligence statistics and needs to be entered – but preferably in a simple way to minimize the administrative burden.
How do you coordinate work that involves many complications in terms of troubleshooting, as well as different departments and contractors?
Good communication between everyone is necessary for any process. It ensures that the technicians on the work floor are not overloaded with additional administrative tasks. Each partner in a process has their priorities. A technician who's doing a lot of administrative work is not focused on his primary tasks of performing maintenance. This is why the EBA should be there to support them to make this administration easier.
What is the biggest challenge that you have faced in your work on the EBA and how did you overcome it?
It still is an ongoing challenge - ensuring that the application is serving the engineering and maintenance teams and not the other way around. An additional challenge is to motivate the main users, the technicians and their line managers. They must see that this is a supporting and not a hindering tool. Therefore, they are essential in developing efficient processes.
