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Municipal Asset Management Technologies

Published: March 2011

On average, local councils who deployed new infrastructure asset management systems in the last 24 months spent about AU$170,000.

So, how effective are these systems? Firstly, the data points to significant differences in system effectiveness for different asset classes, and, in particular, system underutilization/ poor performance for water and buildings related assets. Secondly, there are differences in system capabilities enabling different business functions – while system functionality for asset inventory was rated as good, average ratings for other business functions, such as asset risk management and predictive modelling are only fair.

What can councils do to make better use of their systems? Whilst many councils see a central asset register as the key to better asset management, the study points to other factors that in fact make a tangible impact on system use by council staff. For example, councils who revised and aligned their business processes (such as customer service request and work order management) with process models supported by their systems report about 50% improvement in asset maintenance capabilities over those councils with poor process alignment.

This vendor independent study was conducted to support LG Peership – a benchmarking network of Australian and New Zealand local councils who are committed to performance excellence and innovation in ICT. content >>

Satisfaction with asset management technologies

Local councils who participated in this study provided feedback on asset management technologies from the following ICT vendors: Asset Lifecycle, Civica, CJN Technologies (RAMM), Conquest, InfoMaster, Infor (Hansen Asset Management), Pitney Bowes (Confirm), SMEC (PMS) and SPM.

About 40% of the councils rated their asset management solutions as inadequate (poor/ fair ratings).

Impact of the number of asset registers on asset data quality

The number of systems used by the participating local councils for registration and maintenance of asset data ranged from a single register to over 300 different tools (including vendor products and internally built spreadsheets and databases).

This figure highlights the difference in the data quality in the councils using up to three systems and those with a larger number of asset registers. 

Asset management capabilities

For the purposes of this study, the maturity of asset management technologies takes into consideration their abilities to support the following four business functions: 

• management of asset data - asset knowledge (asset inventory, conditions assessment, asset performance management),
• analysis of asset data - asset analytics (predictive modelling and trends analysis, asset accounting),
• asset management decision support (risk management, renewal planning), and
• maintenance and operation of infrastructure assets.

This figure highlights the difference in asset management capabilities of local councils with tightly integrated asset data and those with poor data integration levels. 

Business process alignment

The study also looked into alignment of process frameworks and models embedded in/ supported by asset management systems with business processes practiced by council staff, namely:

• management of customer service requests,
• management of work orders, and 
• procurement.

This figure demonstrates the difference the good process alignment makes on asset management capabilities. 

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