How the Sydney Opera House Improved Transparency and Accountability

Interview to Saira Buksh, Sydney Opera House ERPG Operations Administrator

My name is Saira Buksh. I work for the Sydney Opera House and I have been with this organisation for the last 12 years or so. At present, my role is security systems, administrator and analyst. I also have experience with Crisis Management, Security Investigations, Emergency Management, Event Management, and Training Delivery.

How long have you been using Protecht at the company?

I have been using Protecht for at least three years now. We have built many registers and we started off with one big project. We built the Hostile Reconnaissance Activities register and then, we developed an incident register for incident management. We then expanded on building many more registers to proactively protect any other areas than risk management. For example, we built a lost property register, training register, venue activities, contract staff and daily shift reports to name a few. We then incorporated data collection for overtime, data collection for activities during a shift and so forth.

I am currently in the process of building a super register for the purpose of capturing all staff’s qualifications, competencies, KPIs, and their training requirements. Testing it against the RD and what actuals are and identifying the gap(s) is invaluable.

Having the training and qualifications register as an overarching register enables us to look at any given time at any individual staff member and quickly and easily see who is capable of doing which tasks, who is qualified or who is requiring any kind of training, for example. I am in the process of building this register as well as developing a complaint register.

We were storing our information in so many different places.

We are really focusing on expanding the way we use the Protecht.ERM system. As you progress with the system, you can start seeing the potential of all kinds of information that it can capture.

Most organisations work on emails, spreadsheets and Word documents however it is absolutely key to capture any relevant information in a centralised application, so everyone has access, full transparency and ultimately accountability for their actions. Any information that is captured in the registers and libraries can be aggregated and drive reporting off the back of all of this data capture.

We are currently also looking into utilising Protecht for risk management for our department and looking at the business as a whole.

Incidents Dashboard

What is the main benefit you find in the Protecht system or in Protecht as a company?

Previously Sydney Opera Houses was fairly behind in technology and software. We were storing our information in so many different places. The huge benefit that Protecht has provided us is collecting all the data in a platform or a system where it's so easily searchable, we can so easily analyse it, we can group read, we can present it because it's all in the one register or the one system, one database, so to speak. And we can link different rosters and then get an overall picture, whereas previously you couldn't do any of that.

And why would you recommend Protecht to another company that is at the moment looking for another system or risk management solution?

The ease of customising! What is really beneficial, is that you can so easily customise it to suit your needs. What we have done with the system, we have adapted it to our needs and it is very easy also to build registers.

If another organisation has different requirements, they can build the system to fit their needs. I am not a developer or a software programmer so to speak, but I have built and built. The flexibility around the system makes it very user friendly. Protecht’s support team offers a great service and the training have been excellent.

We have used the system for everything else and now we are looking into risk. We are expanding in the way we use the system. We are currently looking at utilising Protecht for what it really is, for risk management for our department and looking at the business as a whole.

Other Notes:

I am very interested in any developments that Protecht is working on now. Making the interface look more friendly, modern and accessible. The registers that I have built are quite large. So, what I am hoping to gain from this, is simplifying a lot of things for our end-users because my focus is end-users feeding the data because it is very easy to do.

Because they are happy to be feeding the data from their end, I am able to analyse it from my end. So, it is providing them with access to a really good tool as well as giving me the ability to capture and analyse all of the data.