Lobbyists are the bane of a CEO’s life – and an Asset Manager’s! This presents another good use for an AM Plan. Unlike last week’s story where the council was well prepared with its AM Plan, in this instance it was not. But YOU could be!
The council members had been well educated in asset management thinking and were aware that the acquisition of an old, non-heritage listed building with limited functionality was not in the best interests of the community. But how did they deal with a small, but extremely vocal and active, lobby group that was pressing them to acquire it?
At this stage their asset management plan had not yet been constructed but suppose it was, then they could have shown the lobbyists that council’s resources were fully allocated to projects which had each been justified in terms of benefits and costs to the community and they could have said:
“We appreciate your interest but here is where council resources are going. All of these projects have been carefully analysed, costed and evaluated. Provide us with a costed evaluation and the benefits of your proposal for the wider community and if the benefit:cost analysis shows that it is better than the least of our current projects we will reconsider.”
This puts the onus back on the lobbyists to estimate both costs AND benefits and this will often be sufficient to stop the lobbying pressure but if the lobby group do demonstrate greater value then council knows that it is not disadvantaging the community by agreeing to their wishes.
Some many years later the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council in Victoria actively employed this approach – very successfully.
What experience have you had that would strengthen the short term benefits case for AM Plans?
I dont think this is an Asset Managers problem, its a Service (Business) Managers problem. Will any new asset add to service delivery? Does the service have the budget to acquire and manage it (lifecycle management costs)?