Three words have dominated our thinking, our policy and our practice in infrastructure decision making over the last 30 years – efficiency, sustainability, risk. This is about to change.
Efficiency
With large, centralised, and expensive mass infrastructure needed to support public services, ‘efficiency’ was a key concern. But technology is making smaller, distributed, infrastructure, not only cheaper – but in today’s climate of cyber terrorist concerns – also much safer. We are now developing new de-centralised means of provision and our new concern is how safe and effective they are.
EFFECTIVENESS is thus becoming more important than efficiency.
Sustainability
For infrastructure ‘sustainability’ has been interpreted as ensuring long lifespans. We have designed for this and over the last 30 years we have developed tools and management techniques that enable us to manage for asset longevity. This, too, is now changing. With the shift from an ‘asset’ to a ‘service’ focus, functionality and capability have become more important determinants of action than asset condition. This shift is fortunate for it is needed if we are to address the many changes we are now facing – technological, environmental and demographic. At first we thought to ensure sustainability by building in greater flexibility. But change is now too rapid and too unpredictable to make mere flexibility a viable and cost effective strategy.
ADAPTABILITY is the new word. We need to design for, be on the lookout for, and manage for, constant change.
Risk
Risk has been the bedrock tool that we have used in the past to minimise the probability of both cost blow-outs (affecting efficiency) and asset failure (affecting sustainability). Risk management has been a vital and valuable tool. However ‘risk analysis’ implies we know the probability of future possibilities. Today we have to reckon with the truth that the ‘facts’ we used to have faith in, may no longer apply.
UNCERTAINTY is more than risk and requires different tools and thinking.
Effectiveness, Adaptability and Uncertainty.
With these new words comes a requirement for new measures, new tools, new thinking, new management techniques. Life cycle cost models were valuable in helping us achieve efficiency and sustainability and apply our risk analysis. What models, what tools, what measures will help us achieve Effectiveness and Adaptability and cope with Uncertainty?
What new questions do we now need to ask?
For years we have asked ‘what infrastructure should we build?’ Perhaps now we need to ask “What infrastructure should we NOT build?”.
In the last post
I suggested that, when it came to new ideas in IDM (Infrastructure Decision Making), the usual sources of new ideas, namely academic research, think tanks and in-house research were limited in their ability to provide workable solutions.
If academics have an incentive to continue research rather than provide answers, who has an incentive to provide answers? If Think Tanks have an incentive to contain their solutions to the subset of possibilities supported by their funders, who has an incentive to look more widely? And if in-house research provides depth but is limited in scaleability, where can we look for answers that can apply over a wider field?
A Suggestion:
I am going to suggest that, curiously enough, it may be the often maligned consulting industry that is, today, most capable of producing the more interesting research outputs when it comes to infrastructure decision making.
There is a growing number of consulting companies that use their in-depth access to many organisations to test and develop ideas in their search for practical applications.
- They have the incentives: increased reputation and customer satisfaction lead to sustained and increased profit.
- They have access to some of the brightest of today’s asset managers, many of whom have, or are in the process, of developing post graduate research theses.
- They have detailed access to information from a large variety of organisational clients.
These are the elite consulting companies. They don’t have to be large, although access to a large client base helps. Small or medium sized consulting companies may achieve the same level of innovation by developing a sharper focus.
Of course, not all consultants necessarily act in this fashion. There will always be those who choose a ‘cookie cutter’ approach and try to fit your problem into an already conceived solution. But what you will see in the better, more innovative, firms are that they apply themselves to thoroughly developing an idea; they stick with it over the time it takes to bring it to fruition (often years); and they expose their ideas to others (in conference presentations and in papers on their websites).
Nearly always the effort will revolve around one or a few talented and motivated individuals. For this reason, it pays to follow the activities of such individuals in consulting organisations that you are thinking to use. LinkedIn is a good source for this.
Other Suggestions?
Where are new ideas in infrastructure decision making to come from?
Academia?
One might suppose so. Yet how many times do you get to the end of a promising piece of research only to find nothing that can be adopted for practical use, only an indication of potential and a recommendation for further research? Frustrating, yes, but unfortunately this is an academic necessity. In our ‘publish or perish’ world, where one published paper is used to generate the research funding for the next, producing a workable solution that can be adopted by practitioners is an academic ‘dead end’, and nowhere near as academically useful as papers that generate problems for further research.
Think Tanks? Federal Inquiries?
If we cannot look to academia for useable research – that is research ideas that can be applied in practice – where else can we look? There are, of course, think tanks or public inquiries such as the Productivity Commission. These are usually very well funded and employ some of the brightest individuals. However, both the topics and approach chosen will of necessity be determined by the funding organisation or the incumbent government and may not be unbiased.
Public Service and Public Policy White Papers?
Once, excellent research papers were produced by the Public Service. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ability to produce well written and researched ‘white papers’ was a highly prized skill. However politicisation of the Service and the unfortunate elevation of the craft of ‘spin’, have taken their toll. There are still pockets of excellence in the Service, but, with downsizing, there are few instances of good research written to a rigorous standard and subjected to the test of knowledgeable peers.
Asset Owners, Managers, Decision Makers themselves?
What about in-house research by asset owners? This can often produce some very well researched and well written case studies. The difficulty with adopting the ideas produced, however, is that they are heavily dependent on the organisation itself – its prior development, its general culture, leadership and organisational knowledge. Such research produces interesting case studies but presents problems of scaleability.
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