Integration of Systems

All too often, information technology has been allowed to just happen, and its impact has been of mixed benefit to the organization.

It is of paramount importance that before the acquisition of any asset management system, the corporate IT strategy has been clearly defined.

It is essential that asset management systems can provide the necessary outputs in major strategic planning, maintenance management and financial management.

The different streams should have a common corporate database and individual modules for specific or specialised tasks.

A systematic and logical progression in the implementation of asset management information systems is shown below:

An example of the integration and information transfers for asset management is shown below:

Ultimate System

As organizations mature in their asset management, they should plan towards an integrated system as shown below:

This integrated system will cater for finance, administration and technical management.

The key functions that require permanent integration are:

• Spatial data system
• Property file interface
• Day-to-day maintenance operations and resource management activities with suitable interfaces to the financial system for asset costing purposes.

Asset attributes (physical details), asset condition and performance databases can then be attached to either the spatial database system and/or the corporate asset register.

Rationalising to a Single Asset Register

As organizations work through the process of developing an integrated information system, a point is often reached where a single asset register becomes acceptable to both technical and financial disciplines. This acceptance is often because:

• The financial asset register does not offer an adequate break down of asset components
• By breaking assets down into their various components, a more accurate weighted effective life of the overall asset can be derived and a more accurate depreciation allowances can be developed
• A maintenance management system provides a regular or dynamic update on the condition and effective life (or residual life) of the various components
• An integrated asset register to component level enables the development of accurate asset management plans and the introduction of condition based depreciation (CBD).

A new asset register often corrects many weaknesses in the old registers, such as the:

• Notation of disused or abandoned assets
• Addition of many assets that have never been recorded previously
• Correction of errors in the old register
• Break-up of assets into more appropriate hierarchical structures, which provide more detailed information and categories that allow more accurate valuations and depreciation calculations to be completed.

Best practice has shown that technical asset registers driven by workface activities for planned and unplanned maintenance, form the most accurate record of an asset base.