
from script by Lou Cripps
Just a thought about current Asset Management practice.
One core tool used by many is the maturity assessment or gap analysis. See, for example, the Institute of Asset Management’s SAM+ tool.
The concept here is to audit an organisation against a standard, recognise its shortfalls against that standard, and recommend actions to close the gaps – in an implementation plan often referred to as the Asset Management roadmap. The standard could be ISO 55000 series, or perhaps more usefully the 39/now 40 subjects in the GFMAM Asset Management Landscape.
ISO 55000 has some oddities (don’t get me started here on the terms ‘SAMP’ and ‘asset management plans’), but the involvement of far more people in the revision in 2024 probably makes its coverage more realistic.
The problem with the world of AM assessments and roadmaps isn’t fundamentally which topics we assess.
It’s that we simply don’t take our own principles seriously.
Alignment with organisational objectives is surely the key organising concept in ISO 55000. And yet we still propose AM implementation against standards – rather than our corporate priorities.
We also have a history collectively of ridiculous outputs, roadmaps that detail 70 or 130 different actions, for AM teams of perhaps 2 or 3 people to implement in the next 2 years – as though we had no experience, no common sense of what it’s like to implement major change. Almost as though we aren’t taking the AM Landscape ‘red box’ Organisation & People into account at all.
In Asset Management, there isn’t a ‘right’ way to do everything. That’s engineer talk. The optimal way forward is the best realistic option for us, for where we are now, for what our organisations are trying to achieve.
Sure, there are some things which are probably always a bad idea to do, and some that are usually good. But it’s not about a set of rules. Not a template we can fill in, leaving our brains in a jar somewhere.
Whatever we call it, a top-level strategy for Asset Management is essential. But it only makes any sense as a case for how AM will contribute to our organisational targets and challenges. And the practical actions that will do most to support the overall business strategy.
Yeah, the answer is almost always going to be a better planning process for our assets.
But if we start by taking something from inside AM, like ISO 55000 or GFMAM 40 Subjects, and use that as a basis to propose priorities for implementation, we are doing what asset people have too often done before.
Ignoring the business priorities. Not being aligned, right from the start.
Instead, the first thing is to make sure we really understand the organisational challenges, by talking with the people at the top. They won’t always be crystal clear, but that’s the right terrain to start with. Perhaps we’ll even be able to assist in articulating the challenges.
Then talk about what we can realistically do with AM to meet them.*

The gap assessment we require is the gap between what AM could usefully do for our organisation and what we are actually achieving at the moment.
*In my mind, there is very little chance that the corporate priorities for infrastructure won’t require good Asset Management, urgently. We are definitely not at risk of talking ourselves out of a job.
My boss has been heard to say that when they started the company in 1997, he assumed that within a few years we would have figured everything all out and would just be applying the Asset Management manual. Instead, we learn something new on every project… Twenty five years on, that’s certainly true for me.

My old colleague John Lavan described what we have to do as tackling problems, not solving puzzles.
A puzzle is (in his terms) something where you already know what you have to do to solve it. It’s a rule-based game, like school-level mathematics. Apply this methodology and it will come out right.
Whereas we are faced with problems, where we don’t necessarily know what to do, or if there is a good solution.
As soon as we work out a useful approach on something, we’re faced with having to evolve it further. That is, even if we’re lucky enough to have a good way to start.
Fellow Talking Infrastructure Board member Lou takes this further. There are puzzles, which don’t resemble Asset Management, but perhaps some engineers still wish for; problems, which seems to be our AM world; and predicaments, where there maybe isn’t a solution at all.
I’d like to think building an asset inventory is a puzzle that we already know how to solve. Plenty of individuals don’t yet know, of course, but that feels like just an issue of communication.
On the other hand, what’s an effective strategy for Asset Management in a particular organization? We know the principles (alignment to corporate targets, the Six Box Model of elements), but that’s merely the opening tool kit. Making Asset Management business as usual is a problem, still, for just about everyone. Too many variables and different nuances.
Old age is a predicament. And as for climate change? Maybe, given human psychology, it’s a predicament, not simply a problem.
Recent Comments