Key Messages
- Investing in our roads, bridges and water systems is critical for creating jobs and building Canada’s long-term economic competitiveness. Canadians rely on this infrastructure each and every day to get to work and stay connected with their communities.
- Knowing the physical condition and costs to maintain our local infrastructure is at the heart of solutions to our shared infrastructure challenge. All governments must recognize and embrace the role asset management plays in ensuring the predictability and safety of our public infrastructure
- Municipalities must be on the same page on asset management, we need to have relevant and realistic benchmarks and consistent comparisons. Cities need to work towards a standardized condition grading system for Canadian municipalities. This will help level the playing field between municipalities and help us give a more accurate picture of the state of public infrastructure in Canada.
- Asset management is a tool that aligns strategic planning at the municipal level with value that stakeholders and citizens place on the functionality and reliability of their public infrastructure.
The primer content has been contributed by the Canadian Network of Asset Managers (CNAM) in support of the Canadian Infrastructure Report Card.
The Asset Management Primer was created by CNAM to: increase the awareness of the state of asset management practice; improve the consistency and reliability of the information being reported in future Canadian Infrastructure Report Cards, including standardizing the provision of the data across Canada; and, to increase the participation rate by municipalities in the upcoming 2015 CIRC recognizing that all municipalities are managing assets. CNAM recognizes, that no matter the stage of development, asset management information is essential to infrastructure planning and the development of support programs in Canada.
What is Asset Management?
Asset Management is the coordinated activities of an organization to realize value from its assets in the achievement of its organizational objectives. From a practical perspective, Asset Management is based on a set of fundamentals:
- Value: Assets exist to provide value to the organization and its stakeholders.
- Alignment: Asset management translates the organizational objectives into technical and financial decisions, plans and activities.
- Leadership: Leadership and workplace culture are determinants of realization of value.
- Assurance: Asset management gives assurance that assets will fulfill their required purpose