In the perennial tussle between the thinkers and the doers, I must confess that I have always been impatient with those who want to ‘get out and do’ before they have ‘sat back and thought’. They have been just as impatient with me!

I now realise that we are both motivated by the same goal – we want to avoid wasting our time. 

Since I have confidence in my ability to design a suitable operational system to meet any objective, once I clearly know what that objective is, I avoid wasting time tackling the wrong objectives by sitting back and thinking about it. 

The practical doers of this world do not want to waste their time thinking about objectives that may be “all very fine but not operational”. So they first insist that I show them that it can be done; then, and only then, will they be prepared to consider whether it should be done.

Recognising our common pressures, I will try to get less frustrated next time I encounter this reaction – and patiently explain ‘how’, even though I really want to get straight onto the ‘why’.

Today we seemingly all accept that we are short of time and thus feel constrained to give short shift to thought and planning. But how much of this lack of time is self-induced? How often do we need to re-do what we did in haste? Or spend time working around the problems that the haste engendered?.

Whichever camp you fall into – the thinkers or the do-ers – how do you cope with the frustration of dealing with ‘the other’ ?

Now that we have a great many courses and various trainings in asset management it is tempting to say that all asset managers should be ‘qualified’. But thinking about this I reflected on my own experience, starting from nothing, and I also remembered an interesting dinner one night when a colleague reported that his daughter had an ambition to be an asset manager like him.

“You can only do what I do, if you do what I did” replied her father, explaining that his daughter would need to do an engineering degree and further study as he had done.

“Is that really true?” asked his wife, who had home-schooled their extremely bright children. “Could she not learn by observation and questioning and work her way up from simple to more complex tasks? That is the way she has learnt everything else!”

You and me and, indeed, many asset managers have learnt much of their asset management this way. It is only within the last ten or fifteen years that we have started to teach the processes and techniques of asset management – in seminars, workshops, and in formal education.

Some of you would have a graduate degree in engineering, others would have come up through a background of construction, maintenance, finance, or property development/ management and may, or may not, have formal tertiary qualifications.

A couple of the best asset managers I have known had qualifications — but in nursing! One became Director of Capital Works in a Health Commission, the other an extremely practical policy director in the Commonwealth Government. They really understood the concept of service.

Or consider the Asset Manager I lunched with, who designed and published much sought after practical guidelines in asset management, decision making and life cycle costing, all without the background of a formal degree – just an inquiring mind, the interest to read widely, and the wit to apply what he read. He was, moreover, able to teach these techniques to others who also had no formal training and to design policy that encouraged their use. Now that IS an Asset Manager!

When we consider the number of excellent engineers we know, great at ‘doing’ things, but with little real interest in decision-making, then we would have to conclude that an engineering background may be useful but it is neither necessary nor sufficient.

“But surely we have to have properly qualified people?”   Sure, but how do you qualify people to look for better ways to do what has always been done, indeed, better ways to do what they, themselves, have been taught to do? Qualifications and ability are not synonymous. We need to be more flexible and mandating certain qualifications or training will only hinder flexibility.

So yes, keep learning, get qualifications, but in a fast changing world, no set of qualifications can be allowed to be a stopping place.  Or to stop us

In 2004 (Feb 14, The Buzz) ABC’s Radio National broadcast an interesting interview with an American post graduate student whose research work caused major security concerns, so much so that Richard Clarke, former White House cyberterrorism chief, declared that it should be burnt!

What did the student do to create such antagonism at security levels?

Critical Infrastructure Database

His thesis was on critical infrastructure in the United States, with a focus on information infrastructure. As part of his work in analysing the infrastructure and its vulnerabilities as preparation for determining a set of tools to deal with the vulnerabilities, the student put together an integrated database. The dataset consisted of a large collection of geo-spatial data on where the fibre optic lines were in the country, both long-haul lines that connect cities up, the metropolitan area networks within cities, switching centres and data warehouses that house and direct traffic on the network. The data carried on theses lines included a wide variety of critical sectors in the US economy and global economy including financial transactions, military command and control, emergency response, telephone calls, government communications. “Pretty much everything runs over fibre except for satellite transmissions” he said.

He worked quietly away at his research for a number of years – and by the way all of the data in his database was gathered from the public domain! – until the Washington Post wrote an article about his work, and then things started to get a little heated. Top security people then spoke with his university and wanted to know what security precautions were being taken with the database. The University asked government agencies what security precautions would be taken within their domain and then tried to replicate as best as they could within the university.

Safeguarding the Database.

This is what they did: The graduate explained “The computers that the data is housed on are not connected to any network and are in a secure room behind cipher locks. We have a vault that we take the removeable hard drives to and put them in there for storage.. and things along those lines.”

Integration

What I found interesting about this story is that as long as the data was available in a distributed form, on individual websites all over the country, there was no great hue and cry. Admittedly the student started his research in 1996, which pre-dated Sep 11.

However, the general lesson remains – integrated databases are more valuable because they allow us to do things that distributed databases don’t. In the student’s case it made it possible to analyse national vulnerabilities. 

But the very act of integration introduced the biggest vulnerability of all!

Just over 10 years ago Dr Linda Newton (Canada) joined Ruth Wallsgrove, Chris Lloyd, Charles Nelson (England) and myself (Australia) in London in considering the different ways in which AM might develop. The work was then written up in Strategic Asset Management. We were only looking at developed countries then so I thought it worthwhile in asking Linda, who has now had seven years experience in applying the UN Asset Management work in developing countries what has particularly stood out for her.

Musings from Seven Years of Promoting AM in Developing Countries 

By Linda Newton, PhD

I have been working with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) for just over seven years now. During this time, we’ve worked with local governments in least developed countries (LDCs) to build their asset management awareness and capacity by delivering workshops based our published handbook Managing Infrastructure Asset for Sustainable Development.

If asked to provide two key takeaways from the workshops, it would be this:

1. ‘Strategic’ is simply a point in the future. 
2. Asset management is best understood when its personalised.

How often do we see the words ‘strategic’, ‘tactical’ and ‘operational’ associated with a specific time frame? For example, many strategic plans cover 3-5 years. Now think about an individual. What does strategic mean to them? It all depends on their personal point of view. For instance, for some individuals, ‘strategic’ could be measured months, ‘tactical’ in weeks, and ‘operational’ in days, or even hours. Which brings me to the second takeaway.

I used to start the workshop by jumping right into asset management definitions and principles. For many, it was a lot of theory with no practical grounding. And then I had an idea – let’s start with personal assets. Almost everyone has, or has had, a bicycle. What comes next – a motorbike and later, perhaps a car? Different assets, delivering the same service (transportation) but at different levels and different costs. What if I used this to explain asset management? And so, ‘What I Can Learn from my Motorbike’ became the focus of the introduction to AM.

These takeaways are not unique to LDCs. Understanding an individual’s perspective and using personal examples helps position strategic asset management in terms that are understood. So, I invite you to take a look at your own organisation. Are people struggling to understand AM? If so, make it personal!

In the art world, knowing the provenance, or the ownership history, of a piece of art, is critical to establishing its veracity and value. The same should be true of any ‘fact’ that you wish to use to support an argument in asset management. We speak of ‘evidence-based’ decision making, but how valid or reliable is our ‘evidence’?  In other words, how do facts become facts?  As you think about this, consider the following:

I had been asked to review a paper about disability access and the author was keen to get my comment. As I read it, I noted his use of substantial and very favourable benefit-cost figures. Knowing how difficult it is even to conceptualise some of the benefits, let alone measure them, and finding no explanation of the figures in his paper, I ask him for the source.

“Oh, never mind that”, he airily replied, “what do you think of the paper overall?

I told him that I wouldn’t be able venture an opinion until I understood the data and, after a fair amount of applied pressure on my part, he eventually said:

“Look, I made them up! But it doesn’t matter because I am giving this paper at an international conference and someone will quote me, and then someone will quote that person – and pretty soon, it will be fact!”   Unfortunately, this is a true story and he may not the only one acting in this manner. 

Much of the time, however, mis-representation is not as blatant as this. It can be simply a matter of not paying enough attention to labelling the axes. Often we slap up a graph without identifying the axes and expect the audience to fill in the gaps from the context of the conversation. This is a lazy habit that is responsible for many subsequent misunderstandings. For example, what we think is a trend line showing full life cycle costs, might simply be a trend of operating costs. With very different implications!

What other examples do you have where presentations or papers, have or can be, misinterpreted with ill effects on Asset Management?

Ten years ago, after 20 years, I brought SAM to a close. I asked past contributors what the key issues then were, and what we – as asset managers – should do. What did they say – and what would you say today?

Here is that issue, SAM 400. What are your favourites?  Top of the list for me was Melinda Hodkiewizc, Professor of Engineering at the University of Western Australia, who bluntly stated it was time to ante up and provide evidence to support our claims for asset management. I could not agree more, but have we done it?

Several referred to the need to make things simpler – both in terms of action and communication and Peter Way, then Chairman of the IPWEA, while recognising the difficulty, spoke of the critical need for asset managers to speak out whenever they see their political masters moving in a questionable direction.  If only!  After all, if we who know don’t do it, who can?  

Many recognised the importance of the quality of our people in AM and the need for us to continue to think and to develop our abiliies, not mindlessly react. The ever practical Ashay Prabhu, implored us to ‘stop measuring the gap and start plugging it’. 

While most focused on developed countries, Jo Parker, the only engineer I know who has had to build a bridge under duress with limited resources – whilst wearing a burka! – argued that “To spread AM to developing countries, first understand their world!”  Is it ignorance or arrogance that drives so many ‘advisors’ from developed countries to assume what works for us will work everywhere?

What were the key issues then?   Alan Butler, then Director of the Australian Center of Value Management, now retired, identified the following:

• depletion of core skills and the resultant dumbing down of the asset portfolio “clients” who need to be responsible for effective briefing and critical review of solutions being delivered on their behalf – the asset client must remain an informed client; 
• the politicising of the public service where whole agencies are wrapped up in the short term priorities of the incumbent colour of government at the expense of strategic, portfolio-wide context – impartial advice, without fear or favour must exist;  
• changing the procurement models that place specialist consultants in a position of technical influence where smaller solutions or non-build solutions are not in their commercial interest to present to the engaging “client” – no matter whether the arrangement is called an Alliance, Strategic partnership, Design & Construct, the “non-asset” or smaller solution must always be sought and tabled for real consideration;
• not understanding what “value for money” means for each client – these words are written everywhere including White Papers, policy, business cases and project briefs with very little understanding or ability to explain, measure or demonstrate what levels are sought and achieved – We have the tools and institutions to address this.

I think that this was a pretty good list for the time.  What are the most critical issues we should now address? Thoughts?

“ It was great to celebrate Asset Management’s 40th year with many old friends and new, a celebration that started with AM Peak in Adelaide and finished with the IPWC Conference in Melbourne. At both ot these gatherings about 30% of the attendees were women, mostly young women, such a very good sign for the future of AM. Also good signs of ethnic diversity. I recalled the beginning of both associations and so had occasion to reflect on how they have grown and developed over the years. 

In between these events I was able to spend time in Brisbane and meet with AM friends and colleagues of #Chris Adam at Stantec and #Joe Mathew at QUT, while enjoying the company of my long time friend #Kerry McGovern.  Then it was on to the Blue Mountains to meet #Lis Bastian and to stay with #Jeff Roorda, Infrastructure Director with the BM City Council. This was shortly after a major landslide had caused the  collapse of the only road into Megalong Valley. A new temporary road was built within days but was only able to cope with light traffic putting Jeff in the position of dealing with simultaneous environmental, economic and social disasters in this very beautiful and highly sensitive area.  Then just a day ago came news of a sink hole in a Sydney suburb, the result of heavy rains and it is likely that many more of us will be dealing with triple disasters soon.

The truth is that across the country we are facing major challenges and major change and much that we think we know now needs serious reconsideration. I am now taking a Sabbatical or “Time Out” for the next six months to research and reflect on what those of us in the Infrastructure and Asset Management game can do, but I am happy to receive your ideas If you are also concerned.

PS. I have today done what I should have done weeks ago and that is to upload all the remaining chapters of Norman Eason’s “Maintenance and Asset Management Information Systems“.  Now this link will get you the lot!  Do have a look. I am sure that you will be surprised by how much you can still learn from work that was written 25 years ago!  Then the idea was to develop understanding so we tackled the ‘why’ of different issues. Today the emphasis has been on the ‘how’.  But the ‘Why’ is still critically important – because likely different .