Image by Mollyroselee from Pixabay

Before finding a solution, we first need to find the problem.

In last month’s post, I looked at two problems that we had solved. The first, insufficient housing and supporting infrastructure in the 1950s, was obvious and the solution simple. The second, asset renewal in the mid 1980s, took some finding, and the solution was far from simple, but once we understood what we had to do, we were able to do it. These are not our problems today, but what is?  Fortunately, commentators on that last post have given us some clues.  What do you think?

@Hein Aucamp observed that

“The first incarnation of AM tended to be asset-centric, renewal-based. Now it has moved to ever-greater levels of strategic consideration, delivering organisational value and services across an increasing set of measures, including sustainability. If AM stops taking into account emerging areas of value, it will definitely become less useful.”

Q1  Hein is right, it will. The question is, how can we know where to start and which new or emerging area to devote time to? What criteria could we use?

@Gregory Baird agreed with Hein that the AMgr’s work is broadening.

“Leaders can feel it: the work is getting more complex. Rates, regulations, climate, workforce, customer expectations — everything is moving, and everything is connected. Asset management can’t stay in its old lane”.

He suggested, “The next evolution is Integrated Infrastructure Stewardship — a holistic approach that blends financial architecture, demand behaviour, risk modelling, digital intelligence, and governance maturity into one continuous decision system. This is more than planning. It’s the operating model for the next generation of resilient cities and utilities. And it’s where the real opportunity lies for leaders who want to build systems that last.”

As exciting as this sounds, in theory, is it possible in practice?  The AMgr, even the AM team, is no superman. Forty years ago, the problem was relatively simple. We knew the focus was asset renewal; we knew what we had to do, at least in principle, to get it. The Life Cycle Renewal Model gave us a tool and an approach. 

Q2   Where is today’s ‘key question’ and what tools and approaches do we now need? Is the Life Cycle Renewal Model relevant to our new problems/

@Ian Greenwood challenges the idea that we have to be all things to all men. He argues,

“While the more advanced parts of AM have benefited a small group of infrastructure entities where chasing the 4th decimal point of reliability is of value, IMHO, the vast majority would benefit from just getting the basics right and avoiding the distractions of all the shiny bells and whistles.” 

Q3   Do you agree?  Is the ‘excitement of the new’ luring AMgrs into fields where they are able to contribute very little?  And, if so, how do we, as an industry, cope with that?

@Martin Grey avoided the ‘do everything’ approach and focused on just one, ‘managing uncertainty’.  He argued that

“Recognising and actively managing uncertainty is essential for making better decisions in the present and shaping more informed decisions in the future. This, of course, depends on having the right management information in place—supported by a continuous improvement capability that identifies emerging trends early, enabling timely intervention before issues escalate into incidents or crises.”

Q4  This got me thinking. I like the one-point focus, but does ‘managing uncertainty’ really depend on having ‘the right management information in place? ‘ If it truly does, we are done for.  Not the least because it is probably impossible to tell in advance what the ‘right’ information is.  And whatever it is, we probably don’t have it. 

But surely it is right to focus on ‘continuous improvement capability’. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?  But in the early days of asset management, that was what we were all doing.

@Philip Tiewater. His comment on the Talking Infrastructure blog is qualitatively different from the earlier comments. Philip says,

“This is a timely topic. In many cases, the infrastructure we have is not as necessary as once thought. Shifting commuting patterns, new regulations, and sea-level rise should drive more conversations about devolution (paved roads to dirt roads), repurposing (vehicle bridges to pedestrian bridges), and removal (replacing traffic signals with roundabouts) rather than life extension. The lowest-cost lifecycle decision is often not to (re)build it in the first place.”

Q5  I like this for it applies basic AM thinking to making ‘fit for the future’ AM decisions, and recognises that this applies not only to new assets but also to the replacement and modification of existing assets.  What do you think?

OK. Here we have five suggestions. Where do we go from here?

My sincere thanks to Hein, Gregory, Ian, Martin and Philip.

ID 72282390 | Cane Toad © Seregraff | Dreamstime.com

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.