Projects with which we have been significantly involved with include:
| Defence quantitative risk analysis (QRA) Individuals now working for Andcer have determined the likely cost outcomes and associated cost risks for many major projects. Some of the larger... see below | Defence Fixed High Frequency Radio Replacement (cost modelling, and data discovery) The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is replacing its legacy domestic high frequency radio system. This system... see below | Defence light aircraft Beechcraft 200 (economic cost studies) The New Zealand Defence Force had a fleet of B200 aircraft (more). These aircraft were leased, and were mainly used for aircrew... see below |
| NZDF sizing of aircraft engine inventory (QRA-logistics) High end military aircraft engines are expensive. Too many engines on inventory incurs excessive costs and creates a capability that... see below | Telecommunications (regulatory cost model) Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) (now Chorus and Spark) provided their regulator, the New Zealand Commerce Commission, with a cost model showing the costs of... see below | NZDF high capacity mobile communications (demand and economic cost model) WGS (Wideband Global Satellite communications) is a high capacity communications system owned and controlled by the... see below |
| Defence policy (optimisation) Policy and policy related discussions are often performed without the benefit of quantifying the economic cost and benefit of numerical optimisation. Policy is... see below | Statistics: tools to detect fraud [the value is in the detail] Curiosity is probably the analyst's best friend in examining data for fraud or in any modelling. Analysis of data is about finding... see below | ACC organisational performance measurement At the time of this study, ACC (the Accident Compensation Corporation) had approximately 33 main branches. Each branch was largely autonomous in its... see below |
| Police-organisational performance measurement The New Zealand Police have many Policing Areas distributed around New Zealand. This study examined the contribution of each Area to the overall... see below | Department of Labour (currently MBIE) Immigration Office Performance Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used as the base technique to assess Immigration Office organisational performance. ... see below |
Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) (now Chorus and Spark) provided their regulator, the New Zealand Commerce Commission, with a cost model showing the costs of each of TNZ's local access network elements and the revenue from each customer. There were 1.2 million residential lines and many millions of costed line components to provide dedicated service for these residential customers.
The cost model allowed TNZ and the regulator to gain an understanding of the costs incurred in providing telephone service to customers. The Commerce Commission has a series of documents describing this process, many are publicly available .
Out involvement in the project started by obtaining direct access to TNZ's cable record data. It was necessary to bypass normal access methods because access was required to the entire database. Conventional access was set up to access geographically coded data at a particular location. The proprietary system did not have the ability to dump all the records in a format that was able to be read into the chosen analysis engine. Access to the data was the first major challenge in this project.
The data was loaded into SAS (https://www.sas.com). SAS was chosen because it is a very capable and flexible analysis platform, one that works on individual PC and more importantly was able to be accessed from a cluster of UNIX servers. By comparison C/C++ is considerably faster to execute but takes considerably longer to prototype complex problems. Each section of cable record was individually costed. The cost model was overlayed with revenue data. The model was then interrogated to ascertain the portions of TNZ's local access network that were commercially non-viable, and were thus part of TNZ's social obligation to provide service to all residential customers.
The Crown under the Telecommunications Act(2001) has established regulations covering Telecommunication Service Providers. These regulations establish an obligation on TNZ to provide services that in a regulated market might not be available as an affordable cost, or at all. The cost of this Telecommunication Service Obligation (TSO) was assessed by the Commerce Commission and the burden shared by industry. There were two TSOs. One related to local telephone service and the other related to the Telecommunications Relay Service.
Individuals now working for Andcer, were key to the development of a large-scale cost model of the TNZ access network and of the assessment of losses that TNZ incurred due to its service obligations. The preliminary phases of the TSO involved preparing a model of the access network. Each section of cable in the TNZ access network was in the model, it was connected to its neighbours. The system modelled the costs of providing service from an exchange to each individual customer. The algorithm would for instance have known of and have included the costs of each metre of the local access network, and of all the cable joints. The costs were not just the material costs but they included the structure costs [the hole in the ground where the cable was buried]. The network of costs was then augmented by the revenue received by TNZ. The model was then interrogated by an operations research technique to separate the unavoidably expensive elements of the network from the profitable elements of the network. The analysis identified the many millions of dollars that TNZ then faced as part of its TSO.
The Commission after examining the TNZ model then developed its own cost model. This model was based on models created by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). The FCC is the U.S.A telecommunications regulator. Resources now working for Andcer were key to the development and maintenance of the model used by the Commerce Commission.
The top three skills required and used for this project were: