At this end of 2024, I am more convinced than ever that the whole point of Asset Management is Planning.
Planning, as opposed to delivery – which we have been doing for decades, if not centuries. Asset Management is about thinking through what we need to deliver across our asset base, Plan before Do. (Don’t just do something, sit there.)
That is what Penny created Asset Management for.
And the central concept was lifecycle modelling, supported by cost-risk-optimisation, matched to understanding demand. When is the right time to replace, renew, maintain? What don’t we need to do?
The AMP has been the centre of Asset Management since the very beginning. As captured in state and federal requirements, as documented in the International Infrastructure Management Manual from the IPWEA.
We need Planning – and it is not going to happen without us.
But it is too often still – after 40 years! – fragmentary, driven by vested interests (even the understandable wish by people on the ground to get money for their own assets).
It doesn’t look at what happens next: ‘And then what?’
And I can count the organisations I work with that actually do lifecycle cost modelling or cost-risk optimisation on the fingers of two hands.
To do the maths on all the major costs, risks and benefits of different options across the lifecycle, and demonstrate that (for example) building back rural roads like for like after they have been washed away for the fourth time in five years simply doesn’t add up.
Time for a Campaign for Honest Asset Management Planning?
I have just been to the 30 year celebration of the Institute of Asset Management (IAM) in London, where we also marked ten years of ISO 55000. This was held jointly with the Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM) – representing AM and AM-minded maintenance societies worldwide – with representatives from IPWEA and the Asset Management Council. A time to reflect as well as celebrate!
Russ Seiler of Grant Public Utility District (one of the Columbia River hydro utilities in the Pacific North West) reflected on his journey since 2016. Starting from scratch as an Asset Management lead, under Russ the team at Grant has looked at asset inventory, Wave 1, and the absence of basic asset data. It then focused on the AM ‘system’, as in ISO 55000, and the idea of building AM artefacts. (Wave one-and-a-half?) But, encouraged by Penny’s 2023 book on the beginnings of AM, he realised that neither were really the point.
His conclusion after seven years? “If your asset management program never affects the money being spent on assets, your program should and will be terminated.” AM creates the machine that produces the plan, a better plan for the assets. Everything else is just a means to that end.
It’s the AMP process, ok.
I have trained many 1000s in the last 14 years, in the USA and elsewhere. And that’s what I have found, too. Too many get caught up in asset data – which is important, sure – and documents such as the AM Policy and SAMP, which are also important. But that is never what Penny meant by Asset Management.
And ‘plan’ doesn’t just mean what proactive maintenance you should do, or what you need to spend capital on to sustain your existing asset base. It’s also what if any new infrastructure we require. It’s whole of life and system-wide. It’s big.
Have we been tinkering at the edges while the world changes around us?
Penny and Ruth at AM Peak gala dinner, April 16 2024
Since I last posted I have spent a month celebrating 40 years of Asset Management in Australia with Penny, Jeff and Gregory; gone to one of my favourite conferences in Minneapolis; taught an advanced AM course to some sophisticated AM practitioners in Calgary, as well delivering to as a post ISO 55000 certification client in California.
I have been thinking about where AM needs to go next, at the same time as worrying that things have not moved far enough.
And it just keeps coming back to: We Need to Raise our Game. And not because what Penny kicked off four decades ago hasn’t made a huge difference already.
But I want us to do more.
First, to effect what Penny set out to do through Talking Infrastructure: to look up and out, to make a difference to key decisions on what infrastructure we really need.
Secondly, as I start to unwind from delivering basic AM training – something I have loved doing for nearly 14 years now – I reflect on our competencies.
This kicks off a series of questions and reflections on what we want to change, and how to do it.
How to interest existing AM practitioners in upskilling on risk, data analysis, culture/ system change, persuasion, strategic thinking?
How to find people who want to challenge the status quo on infrastructure projects?
What can we best offer from our collective experiences to support better decision-making?
I am looking forward to this!
Come and meet Penny and Talking Infrastructure in person! Watch this space for additional details, but here’s the programme so far:
April 15 & 16 AMPeak, Adelaide. Penny and Ruth will be at AMPeak.
April 18, Stantec, Brisbane
April 19, PACoG, Brisbane. Asset Institute, QUT, 11am- 12.30, followed by lunch. Join Joe Mathew and Kerry McGivern along with Penny and Ruth to discuss what we’ve learnt in 40 years – and look forward to the next 40. Includes a look of what is happening with asset management internationally, in this big year for AM.
April 23, Blue Mountains City Council, Katoomba, 10am to noon. Seminar with Jeff Roorda on Blue Mountains City Council planetary health and disaster recovery experience, plus update on the new advocacy project underway by IPWEA Roads and Transport Directorate (IPWEA RTD – NSW/ACT), on Lessons Learned from Disaster Recovery, to assist NSW Councils work with Local, Strate and Federal Government Agencies.
April 24, Sydney event, Dawes Point. 6-10pm Harbour View Hotel, 18 Lower Fort Street, Dawes Point, NSW 2000. Using the recent experiences of the Blue Mountains City Council, Talking Infrastructure is holding an event in central Sydney to call for urgent changes in all of our asset mindsets and tools to ensure planetary health, biodiversity and climate change resilience. Meet with Penny, Jeff, Gregory and Ruth, plus local IPWEA. Food provided thanks to AMCL.
April 30, IPWE, Melbourne. Presentation by Penny. Penny and Ruth will be at IPWE until May 3. There will also be a dinner out in Melbourne for TI friends and colleagues – please let us know if you would like to join us. And bring along your copy of Penny’s book to get signed!
If you are planning to attend our Sydney celebration, please RSVP to: amis40@talkinginfrastructure.com so we can keep an eye on numbers – limited to the first 60! Event is free, includes food and discussion with Penny Burns and Jeff Roorda and a whole heap of old friends and colleagues.
Full update of the 40th year celebration events shortly!
Join us at the Harbour View Hotel in the Rocks and help celebrate with finger food and drinks – plus Penny and Jeff on what we have learnt from the last 40 years to help us meet the challenges of the next 40.
Many thanks to Richard Edwards, Lynn Furniss and Matt Miles of AMCL
Penny Burns and Talking Infrastructure will be on the move in April to celebrate 40 years of Asset Management, and look forward to the next 40.
Adelaide April 15 & 16, Penny and Ruth will be celebrating at AM Peak.
Brisbane events April 17-19
Sydney April 24, venue TBC: Asset Valuation in a time of Climate Crisis. Including Jeff Roorda on how Blue Mountains City Council is taking a radically new approach, as well as Penny on how we must rethink our AMP modelling.
Melbourne April 30, IPWC. Penny speaking on the opening morning of IPWEA conference
Wellington May 4-6, events to be announced
Let us know if you are interested in meeting up in any of these cities.
See you in April! #AMis40
In 2024, Asset Management turns forty.
One key question for me this year as an Asset Management practitioner is time itself, and how we act with the future in mind.
The innovation of Asset Management is very largely about time. Penny Burns created AM to look forward in time and consciously choose whether we needed to renew like-for-like, or should manage our assets differently in future.
Forty years ago, we were not thinking about climate catastrophe, and we were only just at the start of the IT revolution. (I had only just seen my first PC, and the world wide web, smart phones and terabytes of data storage for $50 were barely pipedreams.)
But the question of longer-term thinking has in some ways gone backwards in our societies since then, not forwards.
The vast majority of infrastructure organisations still only have very short term asset plans, and almost no asset strategy. More have, must have, 3- or 5-year plans now, thanks to AM as much as anything. But the 15 to 20 years plus strategic view that Penny proposed is still a challenge.
And shockingly few agencies even use life cycle modelling to project the very basic realities about the timings for replacements, let alone a mindset of always asking ‘And then what?’ of our day to day and year to year asset decisions.
I fear as a community we are still underskilled, underprepared for the future: for embracing uncertainty and identifying with the future.
And so, as we celebrate, look back and learn from the last 40 years, Talking Infrastructure plans to act like the future matters.
Starting with a time series of blogs to ring in the New Year. Your contributions most welcome!
In April 2024, it will be 40 years since Penny Burns started the whole thing. Talking Infrastructure plans to party like it’s 2024, all year.
2024 also marks milestones for the Global Forum for Maintenance and Asset Management (update of the AM Landscape), ISO (10 years since ISO 55000), and the Institute of Asset Management (30 years since it was founded): there will be a lot happening.
The need for more considered decision making for our future infrastructure has only grown and become more urgent. Asset Managers everywhere know this. Our 40 year celebration will be an opportunity to take this message not only to managers of infrastructure but also to those who decide, design, construct, fund and vote for our infrastructure.
Like infrastructure itself, our purpose is to support the wider community. There is a lot of satisfaction to be had in this and we invite you to join us, and enjoy it too. What area of Asset Management and decision making particularly interests you?
We are looking to develop a circle of advisors, who, through their interests and work, can have the fun of keeping Talking infrastructure up to date with current issues, and setting its future directions.
Your ideas for celebrating our 40th are also needed and much welcomed. This will include events across Australia in April, and presence at AM conferences and articles wherever and whenever we can.
What did we learn in the last forty years? Where do we need to go in the next 40 years?
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