Why Doing Asset Management is Not Additional Workload

A webinar participant asked, how can our system encourage utility staff to implement and maintain business workflow profit associated with asset management an acronym CMMS, especially in those years when systems still exist where the workforce was insufficient for day to day tasks, much less additional asset management duties.

Heather:

So, one thing I always like to dispel a myth that we were talking about with asset management is adding to your workload.

So, there may be blips where you have to do something, like if you’re going to do an inventory, we may have to spend some time to get inventory information.

But what we were really hoping to do is to get on the other side of that and make your life better.

So, instead of everything being a crisis, we plan much of your day so that at the end of doing asset management, you’re not looking at it as an extra task that I must do.

So, thinking like, well I have three people now and if you make me do asset management, I need five, that may or may not be true depending on how those people are being used but the point is not that if we do asset management, you’re going have to need six people who are going to do the asset management.

It’s that we want to change what your day looks like so that we can do more plans, less reactive stuff.

And I’ll give you one example of a community we worked with very recently. They were looking for assets and the assets are very, very deeply, it’s very hard to find them. So how do you find assets in those locations, you don’t have a map, you don’t have a GPS location.

Well, it’s a long arduous process. So, you have to find paper records, you have to talk to people, you have to get a metal detector and all of that takes time.

Who has the metal detector, we are going to go and track that down. Oh, it’s in Bob’s truck, oh where is Bob’s truck? It’s on the other side of town. Now, we’re going to drive over there.

So, by the time you get all your resources together to look for your assets, it can take you maybe one to four hours to find the asset that you are trying to work on.

What we would like to do, one little tiny piece of asset management is to know where your assets are. So, now if we need to find that particular asset, it’s less than a five-minute task.

So, either you are going to a well-done paper map if you are a very small utility or you have some kind of geographic information system map or you can click on an asset and it tells you it is right here.

Now, I have to save anywhere from one hour to four hours of my day that I didn’t have to spend looking for an asset. If that happens to you twice a week, even…

Ross: It’s a good saving…

Heather:

You have saved anywhere from two to eight hours. You have created a whole day potentially of an operator’s time.

So, what we hope to do is in making things more efficient for operators and managers, you create time, that then allows you to do other activities.

Like additional maintenance, strategic thinking, working with your CMMS system, look at data and make better decisions.

So, there are lots of things you can do with that time savings, but what we don’t want to do is to say, well, if you are going to take on infrastructure asset management, hire five more people.

It’s we want to look at what you are doing and how you are doing it.

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