Asset Management professionals in Australia are the unsung heroes that keep the country's infrastructure running smoothly. They face an array of challenges that require their unwavering expertise and dedication. Despite persistent obstacles, they remain determined to deliver optimal outcomes for their end customers and asset users.
Infrastructure is aging, becoming more difficult and expensive to maintain, even as regulatory requirements are rising. Meanwhile, the skills shortage, particularly severe in construction and maintenance, is adding to cost pressures.
Ultimately, Asset Management professionals have to do more with less. To do this, they need to invest in new technologies that can improve planning and efficiency, and enable a more strategic approach to Asset Management.
Strategic Asset Management (SAM) involves taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to asset management, that aligns with organisational strategy and takes a longer-term view. Instead of firefighting, it’s about preventing failures from happening in the first place and maximising the lifecycle and usage of built assets.
The benefits are multiple:
1. Better decision-making:
By taking into account the full lifecycle costs of a building, SAM helps to prioritise investments in the most critical assets. This also helps with prioritising statutory and regulatory compliance.
2. Increased efficiency and cost savings:
Leaders can more accurately identify and manage risks, optimise maintenance and renewal activities, and reduce costs. This also includes identifying ghost assets, which are recorded in financial records but are no longer in use.
3. Enhanced risk management:
By taking a strategic management approach, organisations can identify and mitigate risks associated with their assets, such as safety hazards, regulatory compliance issues, and environmental concerns.
4. Improved asset performance:
Strategic asset management platforms can help identify the optimal maintenance strategies for assets, improving their performance and extending their effective life. This enhances the long-term ROA (Return on Asset).
5. Improved stakeholder communication:
SAM facilitates better communication with key stakeholders, such as customers, regulators, and investors, by providing transparency and accountability regarding asset performance and management.
⚙️ Activating Benefits by Enabling Technology
Strategic Asset Management goals are supported by technology platforms to generate critical insights that underpin decision-making. Selecting the right technology platform for your organisation’s existing technology ecosystem will fast-track your SAM benefits.
📊 Compiling accurate data
Cloud-based, SaaS platforms offer more mobility and flexibility to organisations looking to maximise efficiency, allowing team members access to real-time data to perform maintenance and inspection tasks on-site. Many Asset Management professionals may have incomplete data across their portfolios and need to collect more information as a first step.
Most Asset Management professionals start out with incomplete data about their portfolio, so the first step is actually being enabled with information about their assets.
Hornsby Shire Council, which manages over 100,000 built assets, needed an advanced, reliable way to capture data. Existing data had been captured manually and irregularly. It was recorded in different spreadsheets, with building condition assessments undertaken sporadically by capital works officers. By using AssetFuture, which offers an AssetCapture mobile app to collect and modify data on-site, it has been much easier to add new data and update existing information.
✅ Achieving compliance
The Retirement Living sector has faced some of the biggest changes and stricter requirements when it comes to maintenance standards. Recent changes in the Retirement Living Act in NSW require an Asset Management Plan to be compiled and maintained and made accessible to all residents. Other Australian states are also at different stages of implementing new compliance measures.
Uniting manages a huge portfolio of 67 retirement villages in NSW with 2,700 units - a mammoth task to create an accurate record of. By using AssetFuture, Uniting was able to assess all its villages, create a comprehensive asset register with accurate condition ratings, and reach compliance in just four months.
💭 Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance uses data analytics and machine learning algorithms to predict when assets are likely to fail. This means organisations can schedule maintenance and repairs to prevent failures. This can help to reduce the frequency and cost of maintenance as well as minimise the risk and cost of unplanned downtime.
Venues NSW runs a range of very diverse facilities, from 19th-century sports pavilions to some of the newest and biggest stadiums in the world. If an asset fails and a venue has to be closed for an emergency, thousands of people can be affected. By deploying AssetFuture, Venues NSW has been able to create a dynamic asset register with a lifecycle costing approach. This has helped it move from a reactive approach to a preventative approach to maintenance, with frequently scheduled condition assessments, preventing expensive outages and improving public safety.
🌱 Improved sustainability
Environmental sustainability and decarbonisation are increasingly important considerations for asset management. The built environment is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Strategic asset management platforms can track the carbon footprint of assets throughout their lifecycle, and help improve emissions levels through improved energy efficiency and sustainable procurement.
Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) has been using AssetFuture to inform asset management decisions for Singapore’s ITE College West. This had led to a huge drop in service requests as assets are better-maintained and have longer lifecycles. One chiller, which would normally be expected to perform worse as it aged, is now 20% more efficient.
Strategic asset management is critical to enabling Asset Management professionals to optimise portfolios and keep up with compliance requirements. It also puts them in a much stronger position for the future, as regulations and expectations increase.
👉 Ready to embark on your Strategic Asset Management journey? Reach out to the AssetFuture team today and share your priorities with us. We'll help you kick-start your journey toward unlocking the full potential of your assets.