The Platypus Dilemma

If Asset Management is to deliver better asset planning, we have a challenge. Are we living up to it?

The most obvious thing about AM is that it’s about physical assets. And for most of its history, the assumption has been that the main quality of an asset manager is that they need a background in those areas most concerned with physical assets: that is, engineering, operations, or maintenance.

Who else knows or cares about physical assets?  And without that interest, AM might be unmoored: a branch of finance or corporate planning that simply doesn’t know or care enough.

The dilemma is that we need other skills that don’t come for free with delivery backgrounds.

Worse, we need perspectives that definitely go against what we learn in engineering school, or the motivation of operations.

• How do we nurture a profession of people who really like the realities of physical assets but think in a new way about them?
• How early do we need to reach potential asset managers?

There are some good signs – Dr Monica Beedles’ Street Smarts and Biz Smarts, for example, and the Canadian Network of Asset Managers (CNAM) work on AM competences. (And shout out to pioneers of new ways of getting to undergraduates – hello, Valerie Marcolengo!)

But, as CNAM points out, we have a chronic shortage of asset managers.

And many who struggle in post without the tools of effective asset management planning.

How do we reach those with the environmental, analytical, process, culture change and bigger picture skills we need?

What is your ideal undergraduate syllabus to grow the next generation of asset managers?  

Thanks to the British Columbia South Island AM Community of Practice for the opportunity to discuss competences this week!