Exploring the Foundational Phase of an Asset Management for Government Journey
Your Asset Management for Government journey begins with a solid foundation of accurate data, moves forward to give you insights into the most financially and operationally efficient way to manage your assets, and ends with full asset investment planning where you can accurately model the lifecycle of your most important assets and predict the maintenance interventions needed years ahead of time.
When starting out on your AIP journey, it is important to have a solid foundation. In short, this means gathering all the information you can about your set of public assets. This allows you to build a living catalogue or asset registry that documents what you own, where it is, and what condition it is in including information about each asset’s material, install date, useful life, condition, mechanical drawings, photos, warranty information, priority, location, parts inventory, and previous maintenance actions.
The information in this registry is mostly static with one big exception: condition. Asset condition can and should be continually updated anytime an asset is touched.
Your asset registry should serve as a one-stop-shop for asset information and is the foundation that feeds a broader understanding of asset ownership and future needs. Moreover, asset registries can capture information in a system that is available to everyone. No longer does important asset information leave the building when a key employee leaves or retires. Instead, their knowledge can be captured in notes to pass along to new employees in the future.
The secret to better decision-making: consolidated asset data
Although an asset registry is necessary, it’s not enough. Maintenance organizations also need a way to understand the current condition of each asset and manage day to day maintenance needs. Enter the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
A CMMS can record a reported issue, create a work order and assign it to a maintenance employee. Once the issue is fixed, the work order is closed. This records the work of the maintenance department. While a CMMS is useful as a collection and scheduling tool, the data that is collected is also valuable as an analytic tool especially when linked to your asset registry.
Consolidated asset data happens when you combine the information in your asset registry with the data in your CMMS tool to look at and analyze your assets to make data-based decisions serving short- and long-term plans. Benefits of consolidated asset data include:
- Smarter decision-making: By tracking your maintenance work by asset, you can understand what it is costing your organization to continue to maintain the asset. Assets require more and more maintenance as they age. At some point, the money to keep them running is not fiscally prudent. What is the right point for intervention? Maintenance data can help you make that decision.
- Justification for new personnel Looking at requests coming in, the time it takes for work orders to be completed, and the cost of those work orders can help you make the case for additional personnel. By analyzing work order data, you can see the backload of deferred maintenance by trade. Instead of just saying “we need another carpenter,” you can bring hard data to council that proves that with current personnel only a portion of work orders can be handled in any given year. That could mean more deferred maintenance, longer and more costly repairs, and failure to meet service levels for the community.
- Enhanced prioritization of capital projects. By having a complete catalogue of your assets, you can prioritize repairs and replacements based on condition, cost, and useful life rather than just the “squeaky wheel”. This helps inform the capital plan for immediate and longer-term projects.
- A more complete view of asset health across the community. Using software to help, you can predict long term asset health based on levels of investment. This helps decision makers “see” what the investments will do for the community.
Having a solid foundation gives you the opportunity to propose changes, make decisions and build trust by using data to back them up.
At Brightly, we know how important it is to have trusted, solid accurate data. That’s why we have an Asset Management for Government solution that stores your asset data and orchestrates your daily maintenance activities so you can use that data to better understand what you need and communicate that need to your stakeholders.
Find out more about asset investment planning or click here to learn about 3 additional benefits of AIP for local governments.
