Sweating the asset Reading the following report I would like to know more about how the council intends to ‘sweat the asset.’ Going from the findings in this recent NZTA report impacts on ‘sweated assets’ in NZ are not being reviewed sufficiently. NZ Transport Agency Final Report: Asset Management Reviews 2013 1.2 Key findings Many organisations were trying innovative and new solutions and we saw examples of “sweating the assets”. While we commend them for trying new ideas, very few were following up to review the impact of their initiatives. This is an important step, which provides useful insight and learnings for future decisions. Common issues highlighted in our reviews related to: keeping the AMP documents current & relevant identification and management of critical assets the level of investment in renewals not aligning to depreciation being charged poor budgeting for operating & maintenance costs on new infrastructure quality and completeness of data monitoring the impacts of change initiatives 1.6 Key themes emerging 1. Lifecycle a. Collaboration seems to be improving regionally. There are some good examples of councils sweating assets, and we should all be learning from successes and failures. Collaboration is an important theme and most interviewees were seeking more opportunities. d. In many organisations, we were concerned that the value of renewals was not keeping pace with the depreciation being charged to the roading asset. 4. Growth a. Where investment has been made in new infrastructure, there is a tendency for road controlling authorities not to recognise the ongoing operational and maintenance costs in their budgets. While achievable in the short term, this is unsustainable longer term. c. Councils are aware of aging population transport demand changes, but on the whole are not actively making investments or planning for it. 6. General c. Some councils are under greater pressure to reduce costs than others. There is also concern in the industry that short term cost efficiency solutions may result in longer term issues. e. Many of the organisations reviewed had been trying new innovations to achieve better value for money. While we encourage innovation, we found that most of them were not looking back to see whether the innovation has been successful. This is an important step, which would help inform future activities. Hastings District Council does this well.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 10:03:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015