It is April 2014 already, and the last blog post was in November 2013. Time had gone quickly, where did it go — in this case four months have gone by.
In my case, I know where my time went.
In December, I was finishing projects for clients before Christmas. January is summer holidays here in New Zealand and I spent it with my family.
In late January, I was busy writing blog posts on WaughInfrastructure.com setting up tips for the Asset Management Plan updating year here in New Zealand.
Then a couple of big, interesting projects came up in February and March (I will blog about later in the year), which kept me very busy. And here we are, it’s April now.
As I was reflecting on this I have also given some thought to asset management planning time frames.
Here in New Zealand (and in Australia) asset management planning updating is mandated around our 3-year political cycle.
In the United Kingdom (UK) I understand AMP cycles are also dictated by the political cycle, which in their case is 5 years.
It would stand to reason that in the USA asset management planning would be completed on 4-year cycles also to synchronize with the political cycles.
In the mid-1990’s when asset management planning was first mandated in New Zealand, we developed asset management plans. Of course, there were a lot of gaps that then were included in Asset Management Improvement Plans.
In our naivety, we planned to do all the improvements in the first 3 years, which of course, never happened.
Time flew by, and asset management plan administrators became occupied with other more urgent priorities. Typically, perhaps 10-20% of the improvements to information, risk analysis, and practices were completed in that first 3 years.
It has become apparent that asset management improvements are a longer-term project, perhaps measured over decades rather than just a year or two.
There are of course very quick wins that can be achieved in the first few years but after that improvement becomes much more incremental.
The life cycle of major infrastructure assets, which are decades-long through to hundreds of years keeps this typically slow progress in implementing improvements in perspective — It is okay as long as you keep the programme going.
Learning to think in infrastructure asset management timeframes and implement it accordingly assist in making long-term and sustainable progress.
It is a marathon, not a sprint — is a good thought to conclude my first blog post of 2014.
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