From script by Lou Cripps
What’s the responsibility of Asset Management? In my mind, there’s no question.
The output from an effective Asset Management system is a better allocation of resources to physical assets. It’s all about allocating $ and people where they are most needed, and not to spend or do where that is not needed.
And that can mean only one thing. AM – the system, not the team – should be the major input to the budgeting process for asset-intensive sectors such as power. And a major input wherever there is a significant amount of budget at stake.
The Asset Management input to the budgeting process is what Penny originally called the AMP. Given that ISO 55000 didn’t quite get it, I wonder if we should now spell it out – the asset management planning process (AMPP). One integrated, co-ordinated process that looks across the whole asset base with consistent principles on which to base decisions about priorities for the medium and long term.
We should expect – hope, indeed! – that this will over time have a major impact on business budgeting. That asset-related budgets will change significantly when we have a more optimising system, to make better use of information and plan further into the future.
The focus is not individual decisions, but the wider decision processes.
- What are the priorities for asset renewals, that is major work to replace or refurbish assets?
- What is the appropriate level of planned maintenance to optimise cost, risk and performance?
- Given the current state of the asset base, what is a realistic level of allocation to reactive work going forward?
- How do any growth or new assets fit within the overall strategy (and how important are they in relation to sustaining the assets/ services we already have)?
And this is not planning just about the physical assets. Both the money and the resources have to be considered: there is little point in arguing for money if there is not also a realistic plan for the people to deliver the work.
If we agree this is what Asset Management has to deliver, that also tells us what the main job of a dedicated AM function is and its key relationships with other functions. We can work through what kind of skills and capabilities we require, and where AM sits in the organisation.
It’s why I don’t consider Asset Management in any sense a sub-branch of Engineering – or the capabilities what we teach on current engineering degrees. It’s also not Finance, or HR, or Procurement, though it involves all of these.
And the bigger the amount of dollars at stake, the more vital that we do good Asset Management.
Talking Infrastructure is looking again at the AMP and the asset planning we require for future-friendly infrastructure. If you would like to be involved, contact us!
From script by Lou Cripps
Sometimes, it feels too much to do it all step by step.
Most organisations I work with don’t yet have any asset plans beyond five years. Some still only have annual budgets. How do you add in changing requirements for the longer term if you don’t even ask past five years?
And how many years ago did asset managers realise you can’t plan if you don’t think about where you want to get to? (At least 20, because strategy comes before planning in BSI PAS-55 published in in 2004.) But almost no-one has properly strategic ‘asset strategies’. They literally don’t know where they want to take their assets.
Bit by bit – and maybe getting nowhere fast.
But there is an alternative, maybe. Can we describe a compelling vision of where we want to be, first?
Can we even leapfrog some of the gradualist things we currently do?
Gradualism may be personal preference, or professional training. We haven’t always been bold about our mission. Some of us are detail people.
How would it be if we really believed we have a duty of care to make a big difference to the, frankly, fairly dumb way we’ve conventionally managed infrastructure?
Todd Shepherd and Julie DeYoung describe this as a system thing. What we have is a system, or paradigm, which resists change – so tinkering at the edges doesn’t work, because the old system will just bounce back as soon as you stop pushing.
This is, of course, quite a different concept of ‘system’ from the parts and pieces idea of a ‘quality management’ approach such as ISO 55000, which instead encourages a bit by bit, start with AM policy or SAMP. Better than thinking the first step has to be IT – but possibly no more ‘sticky’.
Quicker, and less heartache, to go for undermining the whole thing with strategy and long-term planning from the start?
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