Aneurin Hughes, Cardno, asked me this question at AM Peak last week.

It got me thinking and I realised that I never had an expectation, or long term vision, and I still haven’t.  If it was hard to see the future back then, it certainly hasn’t got any easier now.

And yet, without any formal long-term planning, we have made incredible strides.  Which is what makes looking back to where we started so fascinating. 

I had certain things I believed in – that we needed to know WHAT we were doing, WHY we were doing it, and how much it was COSTING us – for these were necessary to make sensible decisions.  These were basic so I was surprised to find so little attention to them when it came to infrastructure. 

Today these same questions still apply – but now we are able to tackle them in far greater depth and complexity.  And I think that ability (and the desire to apply it) is what has changed the most over the last almost four decades.  Once we thought of WHAT in simplistic physical and immediate terms, now it embraces the impact we have having on the environment and on society now and into the future.  The WHY question which used to be ‘what’s in it for us’ where the ‘us’ was the supply organisation, now looks further and is forcing us to have a greater understanding of the role of infrastructure beyond its mere ‘job creation’ aspects, to consider the myriad ways in which infrastructure interacts with the way we ‘live, work and play’. 

The question of COSTS is perhaps the most controversial one we are dealing with today.  Initially we knew almost nothing and a lot of the early development of AM focused on understanding this better. At first we just looked to the financial cost to the supply organisation and ignored those external costs that fell on users, or on the community – both now and future. These are now, at least, being discussed, but we still have some way to go before we make the necessary institutional changes that will enable the issues being discussed to be implemented. In the meantime, so many incentives remain counter-productive.

So my answer to Aneurin was, of course, ‘No’, because I had no theoretical long term vision.  Instead my approach to AM was more pragmatic, more incremental, I just tackled the next problem that I could see.

QUESTION: Do you have a vision? If so, what are the next steps on the way to achieving your vision?

We have uploaded Chapter Two of ‘Asset Management as a Quest’ today.

It is now almost 40 years since Asset Management started.  To celebrate, Talking Infrastructure is producing a history of the development of our discipline, now a recognised industry and moreover one for which there is excess demand.

‘Asset Management as a Quest’ is the first in this four volume series and it covers the period from 1984 to 1993. While future volumes, each covering one decade, will call on the ideas, experience and stories from many leading practioners, the first volume is told by Dr Penny Burns, and it is the story through her eyes.  

Part One, consisting of 4 chapters, was first published in July 2021.  It is now revised and we will be presenting the whole volume, all 20 chapters, one chapter at a time each fortnight. You can find the first chapter, ‘How Asset Management Began’ here.

Information on how you can be part of Volumes 2-4 coming shortly – so, if you have not yet joined Talking Infrastructure (it’s free!) do so, and you will be the first to be advised.