Relating The Consequences to Individual Assets

The likely consequences of failure must be determined for each asset. The same consequences will not all necessarily occur with every asset, nor will they have the same effect.

For example, a water main that bursts in the country may have no impact on private property or other utility services, and may discharge directly into a river where it is likely to have negligible consequence. Other assets may be located under a main road intersection close to substantial numbers of other infrastructure assets and adjacent to large commercial or industrial properties.

It is essential that the consequences of failure of different assets be ranked to enable their prioritization or order of criticality to be established.

This can be done by two methods:

• A point score method that approximates the relative differences between like assets. This can be a simple or sophisticated scoring system
• Developing the true economic cost of the consequences of failure using risk cost calculations.

By working through the above checklist it is possible to identify those assets that have a higher consequences of failure.

It is essential to rank impacts based on the costs of the consequences of failure. However, this is very difficult and in many cases an interim system, where a simple point score ranking system is used to differentiate between like assets, is justified. This can be later improved so the organization can ultimately determine the economic costs of the consequences of failure of each asset.