Asset management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Asset management, broadly defined, refers to any system that monitors and maintains things of value to an
entity or group. It may apply to both tangible assets such as buildings and to intangible concepts such
as intellectual property and goodwill. Asset management is a systematic process of operating, maintaining,
upgrading, and disposing of assets cost-effectively. Alternative views of asset management in the engineering
environment are: the practice of managing assets to achieve the greatest return (particularly useful for
productive assets such as plant and equipment), and the process of monitoring and maintaining facilities
systems, with the objective of providing the best possible service to users (appropriate for public infrastructure
assets).
Infrastructure asset management[edit]
Infrastructure asset management is the combination of management, financial, economic, engineering, and
other practices applied to physical assets with the objective of providing the required level of service in the
most cost-effective manner. It includes the management of the whole life cycle (design, construction,
commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing and decommissioning/disposal) of
physical and infrastructure assets.
[1]
Operating and sustainment of assets in a constrained budget environment
require some sort of prioritization scheme.
Historical background of asset management[edit]
Civilization has always relied on its technological assets to support key functions like transport, public health,
business, and commerce. There is a clear link between the provision and sophistication of technological assets
and our modern lifestyle. Romans built a strong empire through their construction of roads, aqueducts and
other assets. Similar stories are found when examining Asia, Africa.
Financial asset management[edit]
Investment management: the sector of the financial services industry that manages collective investment
schemes and segregated client accounts.
Enterprise asset management[edit]
Enterprise asset management is the business processes and enabling information systems that support
management of an organization's assets, both physical assets, called "tangible", and non-physical, "intangible"
assets.
Physical asset management: the practice of managing the entire life cycle (design, construction,
commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing and decommissioning/disposal) of
physical and infrastructure assets such as structures, production and service plant, power, water and
waste treatment facilities, distribution networks, transport systems, buildings and other physical assets.
Infrastructure asset management expands on this theme in relation primarily to public sector, utilities,
property and transport systems. Additionally, Asset Management can refer to shaping the future interfaces
amongst the human, built, and natural environments through collaborative and evidence-based decision
processes.
Fixed assets management: an accounting process that seeks to track fixed assets for the purposes of
financial accounting.
IT asset management: the set of business practices that join financial, contractual and inventory functions
to support life cycle management and strategic decision making for the IT environment. This is also one of
the processes defined within IT service management.
Digital asset management: a form of electronic media content management that includes digital assets.
Public asset management or corporate asset management (CAM)[edit]
Public asset management (also referred to as corporate asset management) expands the definition
of enterprise asset management (EAM) by incorporating the management of all things of value to a
municipal jurisdiction and its citizens' expectations.
An EAM requires an asset registry (inventory of assets and their attributes) combined with a computerized
maintenance management system (CMMS). All public assets are interconnected and share proximity, and this
connectivity is possible through the use of GIS.
GIS-centric public asset management standardizes data and allows interoperability, providing users the
capability to reuse, coordinate, and share information in an efficient and effective manner by making the GIS
geo-database the asset registry. A GIS-centric public asset management that standardizes data and
allows interoperability, providing users the capability to reuse, coordinate, and share information in an efficient
and effective manner.
In the United States the de facto GIS standard is the Esri GIS for utilities and municipalities. An Esri GIS
platform combined with the overall public asset management umbrella of both physical "hard" assets and "soft"
assets helps remove the traditional silos of structured municipal functions. While the hard assets are the typical
physical assets or infrastructure assets, the soft assets of a municipality includes permits, license, code
enforcement, right-of-ways and other land-focused work activities.
This definition of "public asset management" was coined and defined by Brian L. Haslam, President and CEO
of an international GIS-centric Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) company that
produces software certified by the National Association of GIS-Centric Solutions (NAGCS). GIS-centric public
asset management is a system design approach for managing public assets that leverages
the investment local governments continue to make in GIS and provides a common framework for sharing
useful data from disparate systems. Permits, licenses, code enforcement, right-of-way, and other land-focused
work activities are examples of land-focused public assets managed by local government. These public assets
occupy location just as in-the-ground or above-ground public assets do.
GIS is not a panacea; effective asset managers of physical assets such as buildings make informed-decisions
about what to do and when to their assets in-order to maximize resource-return on their organizational goals.
Sometimes, information displayed geospatially can help those decisions. Moreoften, however, deep
understanding of markets, engineering systems, and human interaction enabled by analysis and synthesis of
information lead to these effective decisions. The geospatial context may not be the most important one to
make understand these facets.
Land-use development and planning is interconnected to other local government assets and work activities.
Public asset management is the term that encompasses this subset of land-focused asset management,
considering the importance that public assets affect other public assets and work activities and are important
sources of revenue and are various points of citizen interaction
Asset Management Plan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An Asset Management Plan (AMP) is a tactical plan for managing an organisation's infrastructure and other
assets to deliver an agreed standard of service. Typically, an Asset Management Plan will cover more than a
single asset, taking a system approach - especially where a number of assets are co-dependent and are
required to work together to deliver an agreed standard of service.
The International Infrastructure Management Manual
[1]
defines an Asset Management Plan as; "a plan
developed for the management of one or more infrastructure assets that combines multi-disciplinary
management techniques (including technical & financial) over the life cycle of the asset in the most cost
effective manner to provide a specific level of service."
Contents
[hide]
1 Objectives
2 Typical contents
o 2.1 Asset system description
o 2.2 Standard of service definition
o 2.3 Current asset performance
o 2.4 Planned actions and lifecycle management
o 2.5 Costs
o 2.6 Benefits
o 2.7 Improvements
o 2.8 Alternate contents
3 Legislation
4 See also
5 References
Objectives[edit]
Twofold: justification and optimization
Justification - to give visibility of the costs and benefits associated with providing the agreed standard of
service.
Optimisation - to minimize the whole-life cost, including the operation, maintenance and replacement or
disposal of each asset in the system.
Clearly for either of the above to work, the Standard of Service needs to be defined (in a measurable way) for
each asset in an asset system.
The first part can be achieved relatively quickly, and is necessary before the decentralization of decision-
making around maintenance and replacement can really occur, but the second requires ongoing work in local
teams, together with better guidance from the center.
An Asset Management Plan should take a "horses for courses" approach - not a one size fits all, but needs
based - taking into account the basic information required. Beyond this, it should be built upon by the local
asset manager according to local needs. A fully developed Asset Management approach usually requires a
number of iterations of the AMP, and needs to be reviewed more frequently for more complex systems,
especially asset systems where the average annual cost required to provide the agreed standard of service is
high.
Typical contents[edit]
An AMP typically covers the following areas:
1. Asset System Description
2. Standard of Service Definition
3. Current Asset Performance
4. Planned Actions
5. Costs
6. Benefits
7. Potential Improvements
Asset system description[edit]
Description of the problem that the asset system aims to reduce. What assets are currently employed to
address the problem? Essentially, why do these assets exist? What would occur if these assets didn't exist.
Identify dependencies between different parts of the asset system. This is important to understand why the
assets are there in the first place.
Standard of service definition[edit]
How should the above assets be performing and to what condition? Define the Standard of Service (SoS) for
the various parts of the asset system or group (a simple performance specification). Describe how the system,
as a whole, is intended to perform in a measurable way. Usually consists of two parts, a measurable
performance specification, and a minimum condition grade (CG).
The minimum CG should take account of the potential consequences of failure i.e. a flood defence protecting
an urban area that would flood to a depth of 1m should the wall fail under design conditions should have a
higher minimum CG (2 or 3). An earth embankment that is only protecting agricultural land, where the
consequences of failure are significantly less will likely have a lower minimum CG (4 or 5)
If further refinement is necessary, the minimum condition grade should also take into account the likely failure
mechanism - if failure of an asset is likely to occur very slowly and can be monitored, then a minimum condition
of 2 or 3 is unlikely to be required - a minimum of CG4 can probably be justified. Conversely an asset that is
liable to a fast failure mode with little warning will likely require a higher minimum condition.
Example Standards of Service for Flood Risk Management Assets:
A. Walls: 5.2m high until chainage 540m where the height drops to 5.1m. The condition of the walls will be
maintained to CG3 or better (due to urban area)
B. Culverts: under 3 carriageways, total of 120 m length (40 m each) provide conveyance for 30 m/s without
surcharging. The condition of the culverts will be maintained to CG4 or better (under a rural road with
alternative routings)
C. Pump station: provides capacity of 12 m/s to drain the catchment during periods of tide-lock (usually every
high-tide, for a period of 4 hours.) The condition of the pump station will be maintained to CG2 or better (no
redundancy)
D. Weir: provides a minimum water-level of 3.6 m to the watercourse above The condition of the weir will be
maintained to CG5 or better (minimal consequences of failure)
For some assets, there may be a legal obligation to maintain and operate the asset to a certain SoS.
This is important to understand what function the assets were designed to perform, and what minimum
condition is considered acceptable.
Current asset performance[edit]
What condition are the assets currently in? List/Inventory & Condition of all "assets" within the system, with
their unique identifiers. This could include information such as asset owner, age, estimate of remaining life etc.
This is important to understand what state the assets are currently in.
Planned actions and lifecycle management[edit]
A short narrative explaining the near-term actions required to bridge the gap between where we are, and where
we want to be. In the case where we are already at or above the agreed SoS, this section explains how we will
continue to do so for the least cost - enabling an innovative approach to providing the agreed SoS.
This is important to understand what actions are planned to bring or keep the assets above their minimum
condition, and able to perform their intended function.
Costs[edit]
What are the short, medium and longer-term costs for the asset system? A forward looking cost-profile for
operating, maintaining, refurbishing and replacing to sustain the Standard of Service. Ideally the cost-profile will
extend to cover the life of the longest-lived asset in the system, so as to estimate the whole-life cost, and make
it possible to determine the average annual costs.
This section may need to be revisited and updated annually, and may form the basis for an annual bid for
funding.
The numbers provided for the in-year (year 0) and the next three years (1 - 3), should be fairly accurate.
Beyond that, estimates of costs to as to enable planning for any large expenditure items expected in the
medium-term and to allow sufficient time to do a more in depth appraisal for an asset system that may require a
change to the Standard of Service. Alternative management regimes should be considered to optimise the cost
of providing the SoS. Where assumptions have been made, the basis for these should be provided.
This is important to understand what the planned actions are going to cost, as well as the ongoing
"management" and overheads directly related to this particular asset system. Also essential from a local
perspective, is optimizing the approach to providing the SoS.
Benefits[edit]
Why do we want to sustain the agreed standard of service of the assets in this asset system? Without
exception, assets should provide some measure of benefits that can be measured or explained. This will
usually involve the translation of the standard of service into a monetary figure. Other benefits may be social or
environmental, which may be difficult to quantify in monetary or quantitative terms, but some attempt to record
all the relevant benefits is important, and more qualitative means may be employed.
Improvements[edit]
Potential improvements to the Standard of Service: The standard of service currently delivered may be
improved by acquisition, enhancement or other means. An "improvement" may also include the potential to
reduce the standard of service, and potentially even dispose or divest of an asset or assets in an asset system.
These improvements represents a potential change to the standard of service and is typically managed as a
project, complete with some form of appraisal of the additional expenditure, comparing different options and
selecting a preferred options based on whatever decision process is appropriate.
The development and justification of a change project is outside the scope of an Asset Management Plan.
Alternate contents[edit]
The Queensland Department of Local Government, Sport & Recreation circulated a letter to Queensland
Councils in December 2008 which specified the minimum requirements for Asset Management Plans in
Queensland.
[2]
These requirements include:
Introduction and Overview
Service Levels (derived from Service Planning)
Future Demand (derived from Corporate Planning and Service Planning)
Lifecycle Management and Financial Considerations
Asset Management Practices
Improvement and Monitoring
Legislation[edit]
Section 104(6) of the Queensland Local Government Bill 2008
[3]
defines a "Long-Term Asset Management
Plan" as a document that -
outlines the local government's goals, strategies and polices for managing the local government's assets
and infrastructure, during the period covered by the plan; and
covers a period of at least 10 years after the commencement of the plan.
It states that a local government must annually conduct, and report on the results of, a review of the
implementation of the plan.