A study published in ResearchGate, “Asset Management for infrastructures in fast-developing countries,” cites that in the Netherlands, the profession of Risk-Based Asset Management (RBAM) is rising.
Companies that implement asset management benefitted from infrastructure cost reductions, safety, and quality improvements. High costs and low quality of infrastructure are common problems in fast-developing countries, and perhaps the practice of asset management will benefit them.
The study discussed what asset management is and the challenges and pressure that infrastructure systems are facing.
Asset management might appear to be new. In a sense, it is, and also it is not. It is new because “it tries to express all decisions in a universal language of value to the business, which may include other values like reliability and safety besides the obvious financial value. Decision making thus is much more explicit than it used to be”.
The study explains:
And it is not new, because “over more than 100 years of development the systems the system encountered unexpected behavior of users, assets, nature, and engineers, and policies, standards, and assets were designed to cope with them. The result is a very well-functioning system, with consistently high quality since long before people knew how to spell asset management. In that respect, asset management is nothing new”.
The research examined the electricity grid of India as a case study. Their fast-developing electricity infrastructure faces many problems like low reliability, high losses, many fatalities, and unhappy customers. The assessment is based on the understanding of asset management systems.
In the study, rapid growing electricity infrastructure refers to:
- Connectivity growth and widespread to the community. If the construction of new assets cannot keep up, outages will increase to the point of rolling blackouts. And overloads in the grid will result in considerable energy losses.
- The continuous growth of demands because of large numbers of customers that are not yet connected to the grid. The situation could mean that most people are unfamiliar with the infrastructures and the risk resulting in misuses that could lead to fatalities and high losses, increasing dependency on the grid for growth.
- When the system fails, and there is no sufficient backup, or backup source is costly, then these costs will be passed on to consumers. In this case, the electricity provider will be required to invest heavily on the reliability of its systems.
The study recommends a bottom-up approach to remedy India’s current electricity infrastructure. This approach will require cooperation between small businesses and villages to start a self-sufficient system, a start-up kit consisting of a diesel engine, a generator, a switchboard, and wiring.
This arrangement will ensure that a better balance between hardware, software, and Bioware while connecting to the main grid would be a long-term option later. This approach will create a sense of local ownership and result in responsible behavior among consumers.
To sum up, fast-developing infrastructure presents many risks, both technical and administrative aspects, not to mention threats to life and riots due to customers dissatisfaction.
These are some of the issues that asset management seeks to prevent or mitigate.
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