• Novice
  • Aware
  • Competent

System Functionality Considerations

The critical function in asset management is the technical management of the assets, which is the way these assets are created, operated and maintained, renewed or disposed of, in the most cost effective manner (lowest life cycle costs), to give the required level of service for present and future generations of consumers.

The technical functions in the information system should reflect these realities, as well as the principles and concepts of asset management.

The design of an asset management system should consider:

  • Like assets are not identical, they are only similar. Like assets need to be treated as individuals.
  • To manage assets effectively we need to break them down to items that can be cost effectively managed by the system. This will vary throughout the life of the asset, therefore the system needs flexibility to grow or shrink to suit the information needs. In general the assets will be broken down to a Maintenance Management Item (MMI) level.
  • Assets don't fail as a whole - components or parts of the asset fail. The system should record the cause of failure. Once a weakness can be identified in a part or component then it is possible to identify weaknesses in other assets. The attribute data needs to be easily altered to include such items.
  • The principles of asset management apply to all assets, passive (civil), static (land), mechanical, electrical, horticultural, electronic, mobile plant, office equipment, software, etc. It is only the techniques, practices and intervals over which they are carried out that are different.

Many functions of asset management are common to the organization as a whole.

This means uniform principles can be applied to all asset groups and allows managers to better judge the relative merits of each activity or service.

It also overcomes the critical problem of individual systems, which is dependency on key staff.

Functions of the IT systems that are for all departments and asset groups include:

  • Asset registers (corporate level) (auditable)
  • General ledgers and cost centres
  • Valuation modules
  • Depreciation modules
  • Maintenance management modules
  • Resource management modules
  • Stock control modules
  • Purchasing modules
  • Risk assessment and management modules
  • Work planning modules
  • Customer/property records
  • Spatial data system - common service layers.

Functionality for certain asset groups might include:

  • Detailed physical attributes of assets - for operational staff
  • Special spatial data service layers
  • Condition assessment modules
  • Decay prediction modules
  • Capacity/modelling modules
  • Optimised renewal decision making modules
  • Risk management modules
  • Specialist reporting modules.

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