3 What does an AM Team do – and what can it do

 

This is part 3 of the 5 part series by Ruth Wallsgrove and Lou Cripps on Building an Asset Management Team.

Three: What are the key activities required of an AM team?

Penny Burns identifies three phases (or ‘revolutions’) that it is worth considering when you look at building up AM capabilities.

First, there is ‘Asset Inventory’: ensuring we actually know what assets we manage, where they are, what condition they are in, cost, expected life and their type and model and age.

If you have poor asset information, you have little choice but to start here.

The next stage is what she calls ‘Strategic Asset Management’, in other words ‘Optimization’: using this data, along with our understanding of the assets and asset systems, to begin to optimize at every level. This is where it starts to get interesting.

What does this require from the Asset Management team?

  1. Co-ordinating the integrated Asset Management Plan
  2. Leading the implementation of Asset Management, including AM training
  3. The development and implementation of co-ordinated, whole life asset strategies both at class and system level
  4. Key role in defining the asset information strategy (but not doing the IT or entering data – which are a waste of AM skills)
  5. Focus for improved asset decision techniques and models to do the optimizing

Other potential responsibilities of an AM team include helping to define the top level KPIs or Levels of Service. If Asset Management is about aligning asset decisions and plans to the organizational objectives, the first issue for many North American organizations is that the latter aren’t well defined. Sometimes, that inevitably means AM practitioners have to be involved in helping to define them. (And that is explicit for levels of service in ON Reg 588/17.)

It seems inevitable that Asset Management also has to take an active role in developing an overall organizational risk management framework, even if the lead is taken by a specific corporate risk function. This is not just because this is a key requirement in ISO 55000 back to back with ISO 31000; good AM depends on a solid and consistent risk framework across the organization and across all risks.  Physical assets can impact on just about every corporate objective, which means they can also contribute to just about every type of risk you have.

Penny believes skilled AM practitioners are key to the next revolution, too: better ‘Infrastructure Decision Making’, by which she means society making better decisions for new infrastructure, especially in a time of change and new technologies such as we face now. Technologists and traditional ‘Planning’ are not experienced in the practicalities of managing complex asset systems, and without this real expertise, we are unlikely to make best use of opportunities.

Note:  Talking Infrastructure was specifically created
to explore and develop this third stage, or ‘next revolution’.

Next week we look at what kind of people  an AM Team requires.

Does infrastructure have value? Does it create value?

Photo by Tembela Bohle from Pexels

As we head into another hot January weekend in Australia,  here is something to ponder while you drink that cold beer!  (or something warmer if you are in the Northern Hemisphere!)  Does Infrastructure HAVE value?   Does it CREATE value?

What is value?  

In 1981, at the height of the Michael Field’s Labor Government’s attempt to bring Tasmania back from the brink of financial catastrophe caused by excessive over borrowing, I was approached by a Minister with a request. He expressed it most diffidently.  ‘If you are not too busy, could you tell me what is value?’   I gave him a mini economics tutorial on the subject which he clearly understood, but equally clearly, it did not get at his real problem. For the rest of the week I pondered on this question for it was particularly intriguing that he had prefaced his question by the statement ‘A number of us in the house have been wondering’.  Now, one minister asking about value is interesting, but a whole group doing so struck me as quite unusual.  

The Source of value?

After a few days, I figured the stimulus for the discussion of value at a time when major cuts were being made to all portfolios, could be that each Minister was simply trying to establish that his department was ‘too valuable’ to have its budget cut.  So I wrote a small, humorous, playscript in which various Ministers (of invented portfolios to avoid angst) argued for being the major ‘source of value’ – calling on economic, historic and social support for their case.  My Minister was delighted and distributed it to his cabinet colleagues. I had concluded that script by observing that ‘fragrance free soap’ could fetch a higher price than that with fragrance and looked at ways in which each minister could increase value without imposing a cost to the budget simply by removing elements that had ‘negative value’.

Relevant Again

I had not given more thought to this question in the almost 20 years that followed until recently reading Mariana Mazzucato’s work on ‘The Value of Everything’. Just as an understanding of value was critical to that financially strapped Tasmanian Cabinet, so it is also critical to those of us involved in deciding on the shape of future infrastructure and we will look at Mariana’s ideas from this viewpoint in future posts.  But, just to get the ‘little grey cells’ working, here are some basic questions to consider.

  1. What do you understand by value?  How do we measure value when considering infrastructure projects?
  2. Can something that has no price be ‘of value’?   For example can private education (with a price) be valuable, yet public education (free) not be?  (Some years ago the Head of a major accounting association declared that private schools were assets yet public schools liabilities – purely on the ability to make a cash return. What do you think of this?)
  3. Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian

    Can something that has a high price not be ‘of value?   E.g. recently a banana stuck to a wall with a piece of ducktape at Art Basel in Miami Beach was sold at a price of $120K  -and not once but three times. It has created a firestorm of comment and brings to the forefront the idea of ‘value’.

  4. Can cost be a good proxy for value?   And if we substitute a more costly (although not necessarily more effective) component, does this really represent an increase in value – as distinct from simply an increase in cost?
  5. Pharmaceutical companies like to price their products in terms of outcomes -such as the value of better health?   Should they be allowed to appropriate all of the beneficial outcomes.  Why or Why not?

Do add your comments and we will examine them further next Friday.  
Enjoy your weekend!

Why you need an AM Team


Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

Ruth Wallsgrove and Lou Cripps continue their series on Building an Asset Management Team.  Their book is to be published in February. More information to come.

 Two: Why you need an AM team

Experience around the world over nearly 30 years strongly suggests the need for a specific, dedicated AM team to be accountable for the implementation and improvement of asset decision, asset risk and long-term optimized asset planning processes.

You can’t just think things better. To improve, there must be action,
and people with responsibility for those actions. 

Specifically, ISO 55000 defines AM as the ‘coordinated’ activities of an organization to realize value from its assets.  Co-ordination takes real effort, not just a general wish to co-ordinate.

This is no different than other functional teams within your organization where expertise and specialization deliver value.  If it is your plan to deliver the AM capabilities, you need to be intentional in adding this competency to your organization.

The likelihood of hitting a target you haven’t specified
or aren’t aiming at is low.

Without a focal point, organizations struggle to do more than isolated improvements, and generally lack a framework or structure to bring together the different activities around assets.

What most will fail to achieve, without at least a small dedicated team, includes:

  • The development of whole life strategies for the assets
  • Integrated long term asset planning: someone has to do the co-ordination, develop the processes, and build the relationships across functions to bring them together
  • Asset risk management beyond safety, general corporate risks, or a high level risk register
  • Ownership of the Asset Management system and AM objectives

Take it seriously

It also looks fairly impossible to implement good Asset Management if you have no-one who knows much about it.  Rule of thumb: you need at least two people who have been on an Asset Management course to begin.

We might go further and suggest that if there is no-one who is prepared to identify as an Asset Management professional, dedicated to getting themselves and their colleagues developed in Asset Management skills, a company doesn’t really know what to do or how to go about it.

It is easy in this area to be unconsciously incompetent – not even to know what you don’t know.

If no-one in the organization really knows what Asset Management means, they can be sold a line by, a consultant who doesn’t know either.  Real examples include organizations who decided Asset Management is an implementation of work management IT, a.k.a. an ‘Enterprise Management System’; or that it equates to reliability-centered maintenance (RCM). Both are very useful tools, but they aren’t a transformation of the business in themselves, and can be expensive, painful and applied wrongly.

Asset Management is about people, relationships, assets and strategies.  You need an AM leader that has some knowledge of each. Leadership is a skillset beyond technical knowledge or management proficiencies.  So it is worth careful thought about who can deliver this to the organization.

AM is a better way to manage our asset base overall.
For an asset-intensive sector like Public Transit,
that means how we do business overall.

 

Building an AM Team

 

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

Building an AM Team is like creating a piece of abstract art.  What makes it work?  The choice of colour, shape, positioning, the passion?  All of this, and more!   A practitioner’s eye and experience definitely counts.  This month, Talking Infrastructure is running excerpts from a new USA guide to Building an Asset Management Team, co-written by one of TI’s long-time collaborators, Ruth Wallsgrove, together with Lou Cripps, who heads up the Asset Management Division at the Regional Transportation District in Denver.  It will be available shortly – and we will let you know when and how to get hold of it.

One: Building an Asset Management Team

‘Building an Asset Management Team’ is intended as a practical guide for any infrastructure agency interested improving overall Asset Management.  It is our response to common questions around staffing to perform the functions and competencies required to support an effective Asset Management system.

Asset Management carries the flag for good asset stewardship, the responsibility that comes with managing critical infrastructure assets.  We owe this to current and future generations.

‘Planning brings the future into the present
so we can do something about it now.’

This includes understanding the intergenerational liabilities that are delivered with all longer life assets, and that once something is gone, it can’t always be replaced. We cannot take a better future for granted; we need to work hard each day to bring a better future into reality.

We have to stop making asset decisions in silos, and start to join up the dots.  For example, a decision to electrify a bus fleet has to be made with the full understanding of the interdependencies between fleets and facilities.  The type of propulsion system in buses isn’t a decision that can come from strategic planning or engineering alone.

A basic question for AM practitioners is: And then what? We build a shiny new rail line. What is it going to take to operate and maintain it successfully and sustainably for the next fifty years or more? We buy a new fleet: how will it interact both with the other assets and systems we already have, and with our existing skills and processes?

The Challenge

The challenge for US Transit Agencies, and other sectors wanting to implement Asset Management, is finding the right people and assigning committed resources to its delivery.

Asset Management is increasingly important – yet there are few
experienced AM practitioners, and even fewer useful resources
on how to develop an AM team.

The thirty years since Asset Management began to be established in Australia and New Zealand – and much less time in many places – is not long to establish a stream of trained and experienced people. AM is still not taught at undergraduate level, and only partially on a few post graduate courses up until now.  It isn’t included in the standard curricula of business, finance, engineering, urban planning or other relevant disciplines.

The demand for Experienced AM teams is increasing

Add into these the now legislated requirements in North America for Asset Management, such as Ontario Regulation 588/17, or the US Federal Transportation Administration TAM rules, that require at least knowledge of it in those regulated organizations, and the demand wildly outstrips supply for anyone with any AM experience.

This guide is based on our personal experiences; it reflects the views of us as authors rather than representing our employers, any institution or the wider AM community.  Neither of us could write this document alone.

If you are

  • developing a business case for setting up an AM team,
  • establishing a team,
  • considering where to locate an AM team in the organizational structure, or
  • wondering how to find and attract the staff you need.

this guide will be invaluable.

To come:

  1. Why you need an AM team
  2. What are the key activities of an AM team?
  3. What kind of people does an AM team need?
  4. What is required of an AM lead?

What do the young know that we don’t?

Caroline Crouchley, 13 year old designer of a simpler hyperloop

When the young are given the chance to design the future (the future, incidentally, that they will inhabit) where do they look?   Well, the 2019 3M Young Scientists Challenge Winners have been announced giving us a chance to find out.

Caroline Crouchley, an eighth-grader at Garden City Middle School from Garden City, New York, developed a sustainable method of public transportation that eliminates the need for a diesel engine or electric motor in trains.  She took and improved on the hyperloop design of Tesla inventor, Elon Musk.  Impressive enough in itself, but consider her reasoning:

“It has a simpler design, can be more easily constructed, can utilize the existing footprint of rail right of ways, and is cheaper to build,”   She would like to see the hyperloop concept move forward but sees her design as an intermediate step that could realistically happen earlier.

Image courtesy Caroline Crouchley

“What is needed are gradual steps. I see my project as a more practical leap right now from where we are to where we need to go. My proposed design offers high-speed train travel that could be developed sooner and at a much lower cost. It makes more sense as it uses existing rights of way. I am a big supporter of the hyperloop, but I see my project as a more feasible opportunity right now.”

Here is a 13 year old who instinctively recognises that in approaching the future we should go for ‘Continual Adaptation’.

Three of the first four place getters chose to focus on problems relating to infrastructure.  In addition to Caroline’s work, we have:  

In third place, Jordan Prawira, an eighth-grader in California, invented a wind turbine inspired by hurricane formation concepts to improve the performance and efficiency of current wind turbines.

In fourth place, Camellia Sharma, a seventh-grader in Virginia, developed a water leakage detection system to identify underground water leakage and reduce the estimated 48.6 billion cubic meters of water lost annually through current distribution systems worldwide.

They didn’t design grand new infrastructure projects, using old technology, costing billions of dollars and taking unknown decades.  Quite the converse!   They saw that the way to the future is by ‘Continual Adaptation’.

Follow up.

The achievements of these young scientists are impressive, but equally so are problems they chose to examine and the ideas they developed –  from a solution to mitigate earth’s rising temperatures by planting hydroponic trees in the ocean, to a predictive model using machine learning and neural networks to predict and prevent the instances of forest fires, to a new approach to carbon capture that extracts carbon dioxide from the air and recycles it into natural volcanic rock. 

If you would like more information and to be encouraged by their new ideas, their focus and their practicality (well worth emulating), go here.

 

Growing smaller but smarter


Photo by Ahmed Aqtai from Pexels

“Growth does not mean size!”  

This is the kind of comment that you might expect from a new economics, or a new age group, but you probably would not expect to hear it from a major multinational.  Yet that was how the new CEO of Suez Environment, a major global water and waste organisation, opened his announcement of the company’s 2030 Vision.  He was referring to physical size for he went on to speak of reducing capital (physical structures) and increasing IT, of focusing not on ‘growth’ as such, but on selecting just those areas in which they could add most value.  In other words, to grow performance and profit.  And yes, profit is a ‘good thing’, if it is a reflection of good performance.

I have a feeling we are about to see more of this kind of growth take place from now on. We can contrast this approach to the older approach where companies seek to grow simply by amalgamations and mergers. In the recent past, there has been a lot of this ‘growth’ but it really isn’t growth at all, because nothing has been added by the merger (despite claims to the contrary). It is just a re-packaging of what already exists.  This has been particularly prevalent in engineering and consulting, and yes, also in asset management, companies. Yet it seems that every time a merger occurs, not only do we add more ‘administrative’ levels (i.e. more cost) but many of those employees who are most able and innovative, leave the mega businesses and set up their own businesses as small, more flexible, more imaginative units – and thrive.  

So is ‘size’, as such, a good indicator of company strength? What examples do we have of growing ‘smarter’ rather than simply larger?  If we are in future to focus on growing ‘smarter’ rather than ‘larger’, what would we measure, what indicators would/should we focus on? How does ‘big data’ and algorithms offer opportunities for smart growth? 

And the important question:  

How can strategic asset management contribute to such ‘smart growth’? 

Exploring new AM Ideas

Photo by Miriam Espacio

It is rare to come up with 5 new directions from a single conference after 30 years of attending.  But the last 2 days at the Sydney ‘Asset Management for Critical Infrastructure’  conference, I did, and I am both excited and grateful. There is nothing like a nice idea to wrap your head around.  Here, in brief, is early notification of what I will probably be thinking and writing about in the next several weeks (even months).  Please join me in exploration.

   1.  Business Cases 

I made a disparaging comment about the quality of business cases and was taken up on the issue.  “Why so bad?” he asked.  I thought that there was probably three reasons.  1. We come at them with the wrong attitude.  We don’t ask, ‘is this project justifiable?’ and then seek the information on costs and benefits that would enable us to answer the question, instead we start from the biased position of ‘how can we prove that this project should go ahead?’  Under these circumstances it is not surprising we have a tendency to overstate the benefits and understate the costs.  2.  It is a genuinely difficult thing to figure out the benefits of infrastructure, for they usually reach way beyond the immediate recipients of the infrastructure service.  I have also found, surprising as this might sound, that there is genuine difficulty for many in determining what is a benefit and what is a cost.  3. There is a lack of independence.  I was told (who by?) that in Germany the C/B studies are done independently.  This would be a great help if we were to adopt that here.  It would overcome the first two issues and enable all projects to be considered on an equal footing as well as allowing the evaluation body to develop real evalution skill.    

  2.  AM Ethics  

Ashley Bishop had asked, in a comment to an earlier post,  how AM could develop as a profession.  I had given a keynote address on this many years back, but not covered one particular aspect that a fellow raised yesterday (who?). He said that we couldn’t become a profession until we developed a set of professional ethics.  Fascinating!  I started to wonder what such a set of professional ethics might look like?  I would love to hear from anybody who also finds this an interesting question.

    3.  The Boom that never ends  

Andrew O’Connor, KPMG had made it clear that we are currently experiencing a boom in infrastructure spending.  Except that it isn’t!   At least it isn’t if we are to believe new Infrastructure Australia CEO, Romily Madew, who argued that this level of spending is now ‘the new normal’. Booms come to an end, that is the nature of a boom, they don’t become the ‘new normal’.  Capital spending over the next 10 years is about double that of the previous ten or around 100% growth.  Justified by population increase?   But that is only expected to be less than 25%.   If this level is to be the ‘new normal’, it means we will continue to spend on infrastructure at about 4 times the rate of population growth!   Does this sound normal?  Let alone necessary and possible?  And I am only looking at continuation of the level, if we look at continuation of the ‘rate of growth’,  the problem assumes an even scarier dimension.   What on earth are we thinking here?     to be explored.

  4.  Selective projections 

All spending projections focus on capital costs. But every time we build a hospital, the recurrent costs (medical staff, cleaning staff, medical consumables, as well as the infrastructure operations and maintenance costs) easily come to about 40-50% of the capital costs, and they do this every year.  Schools and Universities also have a high recurrent to capital ratio. Utilities less so, and probably roads the least of all, nevertheless even at the lowest level we are looking at around 10% of the capital cost as an ongoing recurrent cost.  These costs continue even when the ‘boom’ has passed.  Tom Carpenter said that in Japan, forecasts include both capital and recurrent.  This is a much safer management process.  If they can, why can’t we?

  5.  Infrastructure Debt and national security  

Where are we getting the money from for this infrastructure spending?  And how much are we paying for it?  Already the University sector is financially dependent on China (as reported in the AFR, 21 August). How soon before all sectors are?  Romily Madew, CEO, Infrastructure Austraia, said that this question was not within her remit.  She thought it maybe was being done in the Treasury.  Who is keeping an eye on this?  The University sector has become dependent on Chinese funds simply because the Federal Government took short term decisions. It didn’t see today’s consequences. Maybe it is about time we took a serious look before this all gets out of hand.   To be explored – does anyone know where this is being examined?

If any of these ideas intrigue you and you would like to work with me to see where these ideas can go – please write to me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com.

For more information on AM for Critical Infrastructure

Asset Management is Exciting

 

Photo by Matheus Bertelli

“How did you get involved in asset management?”  

I asked this question some years ago and this answer blew me away! For sheer excitement and enthusiasm, it is a marketing masterpiece. I haven’t been able to improve on it – can you?

Michael Brendali wrote:  “My involvement and keen interest in asset management began in the second-half of 2008. I was a mechanical design engineer finishing up a long and enjoyable stint on the Sydney Desalination Project when I was asked to contribute to a project we (Sinclair Knight Merz) were undertaking to evolve the asset management strategy for a major urban water utility’s critical infrastructure.

“The fun of complex decision-making from
physical
to the business effectiveness”

I was initially meant to work for about one month on the project as my knowledge of their corporate databases would prove useful for one aspect of the project, but once I became involved I found the asset management field entirely engrossing. This was a world of complex decision-making, dealing with everything from the physical properties of pipes and soils, to the regulatory environment of the utility, to the effectiveness of internal business processes and knowledge management systems. A world that requires you to see the big picture while understanding the intricacies of the minutiae.

A world where on any given day I can be working with operators, maintenance crews, scientists, economists, planners, asset managers or general managers. I was hooked! I was able to expand my role on the project and so that original one month turned into a new career direction

“a collaborative environment”

I have worked in asset management ever since and am currently completing a Masters of Science degree in Water Services Management at UNESCO-IHE in Delft, the Netherlands. This degree focuses on the integration of legal, economic, institutional, organisational and technical considerations for the successful provision of infrastructure services. I am currently undertaking my MSc Thesis, which I am using to research the nature and effectiveness of the collaborative environment for sharing and progressing (strategic) asset management within the Australian urban water sector.

“taking ownership of challenges, even relishing them, and
sharing wisdom for the progression of the discipline”

The human factor of asset management strongly appeals to me. In the current era where we have available a multitude of software, tools, applications and models (which have their value), the indispensible nature of educated professionals with sharp minds cannot be forgotten. Indeed, I think that is one of the great strengths of the asset management community – it contains many talented individuals who take ownership of the challenges they face (perhaps even relish them) and willingly share their wisdom for the progression of the discipline. It is a community that makes me want to actively participate too.

“where you can enjoy debates at many levels”

I truly enjoy the many challenges present in asset management and the debates they spur at all different levels – qualitative versus quantitative analysis; prescriptive standards versus supportive guidelines; structural reform of utilities or the encouragement of voluntary alliances; maintenance or renewal; compliance versus innovation. I have come into the industry at a very interesting time and have been particularly fortunate to have had the guidance and encouragement of a very talented senior practitioner within my firm, as well as the support of my organisation. I can wholeheartedly endorse the value of mentorship on the development of a younger engineer.

“influencing decisions representing
hundreds of millions of dollars”

If I sound overly excited by asset management, it is because I find working in asset management deeply satisfying. I value the fact that the work I do contributes to the sustainable provision of essential services and that, thanks to strategic asset management, decisions influencing hundreds of millions of dollars of (often public) spending can be made prudently.

I look forward to the challenges ahead!”

Well, what do think?  Is there anything that Michael has missed out?  or new things that have come up since?

PS Michael, wherever you are now and whatever it is that you are doing I hope you still find work exciting.  Do let me know what you are doing and I will update this post with your current details.

Two more topics have been added to our Tuesday afternoon workshop agenda

Tuesday afternoon (30 july), in addition to the topics listed in our earlier post, we will also have the following, lead by Sally Nugent, former CEO of the Asset Management Council, now Director, Sallyent Pty Ltd, and currently working on a new book on asset management, culture and leadership,

1.  How and What to ask: do you know what decision model you are using for your project or plans, and what questions to ask? For example

  • Why is it important to make decisions promptly? (The Consequences Model)
  • How do we identify the ‘next big thing’? (The Hype Model)
  • Why does the printer always break down just before a deadline? (The Results Optimisation Model)

Reference The Decision book Fifty models for strategic thinking

2.   Have you considered the context of your project or required solution with ‘open systems’ in mind. How does context influence the questions you ask?

Margaret Wheatley (2006, Leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world) points out that much of the current thinking in management science is based on Newtonian mechanics – an approach primarily based on reductionism – the best way to understand the whole is to break it up into smaller parts and understand those individual parts.  The premise being that if you understand how the heart works and the liver works, you will understand the entire body.  The problem is that two critical elements are missing

    1. understanding the individual parts doesn’t provide any understanding of how the parts interact.
    2. very few organisations operate in an environment where they are closed off from external factors.

Also

I am also hoping to add a discussion on real options analysis.

So if you find sitting and listening to others in conferences a bit passé, join us on Tuesday afternoon, where you get to take part in the entertainment!

Sign up in the comments, or better, write me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com

And I will send meeting details.

Death Rattle

Just before my father died, he drove to visit me, then cheerfully walked down the road to have a haircut. He had been mostly bedridden for over a year and it was hard to recognise in this strong and happy man, the person I knew to be so ill. Within days he was in hospital and a week later he was dead.   I found out  later that this last burst of energy from a dying person is not at all unusual.

As with people, also with ideas?

As I watch the attempts of politicians to promote the use of coal fired generation, I think the same may apply to ideas.  The fight for the dying idea of fossil fuel generation is so strong with some that it seems to outweigh all the death indicators, like the facts that solar is now far cheaper as well as environmentally more sustainable, that banks are not interested in supporting new construction and insurers are withdrawing their support. 

And Rail?

What other examples can we see around us?   I am a train buff.  I enjoy travelling on trains, especially the London and Sydney tube lines, and my library contains many books of rail journeys and videos documenting the development, operations and maintenance of underground rail, so it hurts to think that this latest burst of rail construction might be another death rattle.  However with the arrival of trackless trams, automated driving, and potentially reduced demand with greater use of video conferencing, and increases in the number of people working from home rather than central city offices (despite increased populations), one has to ask the question.  On any rational assessment the need to cope with a rapidly changing future would seem to argue in favour of transport infrastructure that is lighter and more adaptable.

And yet the rapturous reaction to the proposal of a Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop, with hardly a voice raised in opposition, challenges this rationality.  How much of this support is fuelled by the heady expectation that, with the rail loop, Melbourne will become another ‘London’ with all the status that implies?  How much is it because we are familiar with this means of transport and therefore can easily visualise such a future whereas other options are perhaps still in science fantasy land?  At this stage, these are just questions.

Professor Graham Currie

So I am greatly looking forward to my interview this Friday with Professor Graham Currie on the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop.  Professor Currie is Director of Monash Infrastructure, Chair of Public Transport, and Professor in Transport Engineering.  He is a renowned international Public Transport research leader and policy advisor with over 30 years experience.  He has published more research papers in leading international peer research journals in this field than any other researcher in the world.

(I don’t know whether this impresses you, but it impresses the heck out of me!)

Professor Currie is also founder and Director of the Public Transport Research Group at Monash University which was identified as the 3rd top academic research group in the world in an European independent review of the field in 2015.

I could go on about his numerous best paper awards and countless other achievements, but you get the picture.   This is a person who knows what he is talking about when it comes to public transport.

You will be able to hear this interview on the September episode of our podcast.

YOUR CHANCE TO ASK YOUR QUESTIONS

If there are questions that you would like me to put to Professor Currie –  be quick, put them in the comments section and I will do my best.

PS  For those in Melbourne

If you would like to join us for AM exploration on the theme of how AMgrs can support their organisations in a changing future, be advised that Monday and Tuesday morning are now full but we have three spaces left Tuesday afternoon, 30th July.  Email me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com  – but do it quick!