Te Whatu Ora Southern: Building a Stronger Foundation for Healthcare Delivery

Key Metrics

• 315,000+ People Served Across New Zealand’s Largest Health District

• 4,500 Staff

• 4 Major Hospital Sites: Southland, Lakes District, Dunedin, and Wakari

• Nearly a Decade of Partnership with FMI Works

Key Outcomes

• Shift from reactive to preventive maintenance: Asset management practices have matured significantly — moving from ad hoc reactive responses to a structured, data-driven preventive maintenance programme that reduces the risk of unexpected failures.

• Reduced risk of service disruption: By pre-empting asset failures before they occur, the facilities team has meaningfully reduced the likelihood of breakdowns affecting the delivery of critical healthcare services across the district.

• Better decisions through better data: FMI Works provides the centralised data platform needed to gather, access, and analyse asset information — enabling informed decisions about refurbishment, replacement, and maintenance planning at an organisational level.

• Growing organisation-wide compliance: A deliberate programme of stakeholder education and system accessibility has driven steadily increasing compliance with asset management processes throughout the organisation, from frontline staff to executive level.

• A collaborative, long-term FMI partnership: Nearly a decade of working closely with the FMI Works team has produced a flexible, responsive relationship — one that continues to evolve alongside Te Whatu Ora Southern’s growing asset management ambitions.

About Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern is responsible for planning, funding, and delivering health and disability services to a population of over 315,000 people across New Zealand’s lower South Island — the largest geographic catchment of any health district in the country. The organisation operates across four major hospital sites, partners with a wide range of primary and community providers, and employs approximately 4,500 staff, supported by over $900 million in annual government funding.

At the heart of everything Te Whatu Ora Southern does is a commitment to equitable, patient-centred care — and that mission depends entirely on the reliability and integrity of the facilities and assets through which those services are delivered.

Learn more at southerndhb.govt.nz.

The Challenge

Te Whatu Ora Southern first began using FMI software to log work orders and manage maintenance activity — a functional starting point, but one that only addressed the immediate surface of a deeper challenge. As the organisation grew its understanding of what world-class facilities management could look like, it became clear that a reactive approach to maintenance was no longer sufficient for an organisation of this scale and complexity.

The risks of staying reactive were significant. In a healthcare environment, an unexpected asset failure is not simply an inconvenience — it can delay care, compromise clinical environments, and in the most serious cases, affect patient safety. The organisation needed to shift from fixing things after they broke to anticipating failures before they happened. That required a strategic lift: from maintenance management to true asset management, underpinned by robust, reliable data.

“Failing to engage in preventive maintenance means you’re not maintaining a consistent level of service from your assets, which can lead to breakdowns or delays. Delays in service delivery almost always mean frustration, but in healthcare, the consequences can be more serious.”
- Hugo Zaat, Service Manager of Asset Management, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern

The Solution

The shift towards preventive asset management at Te Whatu Ora Southern was driven by Hugo Zaat, whose appointment as Service Manager of Asset Management brought renewed strategic focus to the programme. Working within the FMI Works platform the organisation already had in place, Hugo and his team began building the data foundations that a preventive approach demands — gathering asset information systematically, building maintenance histories, and creating the conditions for long-term planning.

A key pillar of the strategy has been education: ensuring that people at every level of the organisation understand why asset management matters, and how their role in the data collection process contributes to better outcomes for patients and communities. The easier the system is to use, and the better people understand its purpose, the higher the quality of data that flows through it — and the better the decisions that result. Throughout this journey, the FMI Works team has been a consistent and collaborative partner.

“We have always worked well with the FMI team — they’ve always been open with us and think outside the box when it comes to our systems and what we want to do.”
- Hugo Zaat, Service Manager of Asset Management, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern

The Impact

Data-driven decisions, at every level

The results of Te Whatu Ora Southern’s investment in asset management maturity are increasingly visible across the organisation. With centralised, accessible asset data in FMI Works, the team can now make informed decisions about when to refurbish, when to replace, and how to prioritise preventive maintenance activity across four major hospital sites and a wide network of community health facilities. The guesswork has been replaced by evidence.

Compliance with asset management processes has improved steadily as stakeholder understanding has grown. The more people understand the value of the data they’re contributing, the more reliably they use the system — creating a virtuous cycle that strengthens the asset management programme over time and continues to reduce the risk of unexpected, disruptive failures.

“No matter who you are, where you are, or what you are trying to achieve — the better your data, the better your decisions. The more valid data we get, the more reporting we have, and the better it will be.”
- Hugo Zaat, Service Manager of Asset Management, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern

A programme built to keep improving

Te Whatu Ora Southern’s asset management programme is not a finished product — it is a deliberate, continuously evolving capability. Hugo and his team are working towards a fully integrated asset management function: one where the right people are looking at the right assets, providing the right data, from the grassroots of the organisation to the executive level.

The ambition is a system in which data flows seamlessly between services, reporting is robust and actionable, and the organisation is consistently ahead of its assets rather than reacting to them. For a health service serving over 315,000 people across New Zealand’s most expansive district, that capability is not a luxury — it is foundational to the mission.

“Asset management is all about taking a long-term view of everything — looking at when assets are going to fail, whether they should be refurbished or replaced, and planning for that. The goal is to be able to pre-empt failures and fix them before they become a problem.”
- Hugo Zaat, Service Manager of Asset Management, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Southern