Why the Need for a Municipal Asset Management Strategy Plan?

By Olivier Peyre, B.Sc. / M.Eng.

© Olivier Peyre (2016)

    As nothing lasts forever, understanding that our built environment and its infrastructure eventually age is essential to knowing that urban assets’ longevity is not to be taken for granted.

     From public benches to sewage treatment plants, from municipal buildings to the underground water supply network, all assets require long-term investments for maintenance, repair, and disposal. As cities evolve for the better or the worse, assets eventually show signs of deficiency, with damage decreasing their level of service and shortening their useful life. While the neglect of regular investment for proper maintenance often leads to expensive repairs and major renovations of public infrastructure, more and more elected officials agree that prevention through a long-term asset management strategy plan turns out to be a lot more cost-efficient solution.

     In addition to the dramatic impacts on infrastructure development and longevity in growing regions and municipalities, failure to develop such strategy plans has also led numerous cities to lose track of the current states of their assets. Without a detailed inventory and inspection reports on assets’ physical conditions and levels of service, it is challenging to assess the necessary repairs before a several-storey-high geyser erupts in the street, or before a block of concrete falls from a bridge deck. This is why running regular inspections and identifying the current needs for interventions in order of priority is the first step when it comes to developing a proper asset management strategy plan.

      At this level, the city of Hamilton, Ontario, is a pioneer in Canada. Hamilton was one of the first municipalities to offer to its citizens accurate and detailed information about the complete inventory of all its assets, including the current status of the assets’ useful lives, the rates of their physical condition, and levels of service. Following the modern trend of the open data movement, Hamilton’s government provides all this information under a public report card (https://www.hamilton.ca/sites/default/files/media/browser/2016-03-02/pw-soti-communityfacilities-2009.pdf) that can be reviewed online from the city’s official website.

     The basics of the methodology to develop a proper asset management strategy plan are dictated by the National Guide for sustainable municipal assets, also known as InfraGuide (http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/view/object/?id=146b7142-926b-4110-a0bd-d8cc0c8b6b4b). The guide’s first instructions can be summarized using the following questions:

1. What do we have and where is it located?

2. What is it worth?

3. What condition is it in and how long is the remaining useful life?

4. What do we need to do to it?

5. When do we need to do it?

6. How much money do we need to do it?

7. How can we improve its sustainability?

In order to answer this series of questions, the asset management strategy plan could be divided into the following sections:

• Elaboration of city’s socioeconomic profile

• Description of equipment, facilities, and municipal lands

• Asset condition reports

• Identification of assets in need of prior interventions

• Intervention strategies

• Cost evaluation

• Performance evaluation and maintenance monitoring of expected level of services