In 1935, Queensland was suffering significant damage to its sugarcane crop from the cane beetle. To contain the beetle, 101 toads were released. They were expected to eat the beetles, but they didn’t. Instead, they thrived, spreading rapidly; today, these poisonous toads present a serious and worsening problem across northern Australia, moving southwards.
In this way, what was thought to be a solution ended up being a problem. The toads failed to solve the initial problem; the cane beetle remains, although the cane toads themselves are far more concerning. This is a story well known in Australia. Even successful solutions, acknowledged by all, may still become a problem if continued beyond their time.
In the 1950s, Australia faced a major housing problem. The combination of returned soldiers, the beginning of the ‘baby boom’ and increasing numbers of refugees and migrants led to a rapid rise in population. Demand for housing so far outstripped supply that it was not uncommon for three families to share one house. This, indeed, was the situation for my family when we arrived in 1950. The problem was visible and obvious to all, and the Government addressed it by funding large housing estates. The companies paid to undertake this work grew in size because that was what was needed to get the job done. They were successful.
In the mid 1980s, Australia faced a new problem; infrastructure assets were approaching the age at which they would need renewal, and this hadn’t been planned for. This time, the problem was not at all obvious; it was not until the cost of capital consumption had been recognised, enabling the likely, and extremely high, future costs of infrastructure asset renewal to be demonstrated, that it was recognised as needing attention. This was not amenable to a simple ‘throw more money at it’ solution as the earlier problem had been, and, in any case, the Government no longer had plentiful funds. This problem needed a very different solution, and it found it in the development of a new class of specialists: the Asset Managers.
But back to our cane toads. The extreme urgency of the housing problem had largely passed by the mid-1960s, but the development companies, now very large and influential with the Government, were able to encourage continued growth of infrastructure. However, as Asset Managers strove to bring the renewal problem under control, it became clear that creating new infrastructure only made the task of renewal more difficult, as demonstrated by two major case studies in Victoria and South Australia.
Now, cane toads and large development companies are not malevolent; they are simply aiming to survive, as all organisms and organisations are designed to do.
Where do we, as Asset Managers, stand? Before assuming we are all necessarily on the side of the angels, we need to consider that we can, in our turn, also become cane toads. When the need was to plan for and manage renewal, we were the solution. To address that problem, we considered extending the lifespan of our existing assets; this gave us time to plan for change. And we had time! While we could see what needed to be done, it didn’t have to be done immediately. So we adopted a slow and thoughtful way of moving. Is this still appropriate? Life cycle renewal models were then our tool of choice. Are they still?
Are we acting as if the problem of the mid-1980s remains today’s problem, and that asset longevity is the solution? It isn’t. In today’s rapidly changing world, flexibility needs to trump longevity. Also, the very idea of what infrastructure is, and what it is for, has grown far beyond the simple ideas we had 35 years ago.
Are we moving on? Talking Infrastructure was created to address the problem of decision-making for ‘fit for the future’ infrastructure. What should be our new aims and objectives? And what new tools and techniques are we developing to address them? Unless we constantly adjust and learn, today’s Princes of Asset Management can easily turn into frogs – or, worse, into cane toads.
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