Why is Asset Management important?
Imagine a company with an unlimited budget that has all of its assets in duplicate, that
could maintain and replace those assets at will, and could employ teams of operators
to check and re-check all procedures associated with them.
The risk of any failure would all but be eliminated.
Sadly, this is not a reality.
Organisations worldwide, like Sydney Trains, operate under financial and resource constraints
and must find an optimal blend whereby risks are managed to an acceptable level, with least
impact on cost and performance.
This is where good asset management comes into effect.
When asset management is done well, it provides a systematic and coordinated range of activities
and practices, that are optimised and sustainable to implement, and is aligned with organisational
strategic plans in place.
As a result of doing asset management well, Sydney Trains is able to:
• Increase stakeholder confidence, by doing things right and getting the right outcomes,
that boost confidence among stakeholders, both internally and externally.
• Justify required expenditure with certainty, based on organisational knowledge that is
accurate, reliable and timely.
• Reduce or defer capital expenditure, however the change in risk going
forward must be established and managed.
• Reduce operating / ongoing expenditure whilst having a clear view in the change in
operating risks going forward.
• Reduce risk through application of risk management frameworks that cover an assets lifecycle
• Prioritise works by understanding which
assets are critical to the business • Improve performance through the coordinated
actions we take.
• Manage the unknown, embrace it, and create improvement plans to close the gaps over time,
whilst still making good decisions • Continually improving our actions to have
positive impact in improving performance, and closing the loop on previous decisions
• Increase corporate value.
People want to be part of Sydney Trains and the public want to use our services.
• Develop sustainable approaches that ensure what we do is repeatable and can be repeated
sustainably into the future.
In summary, good Asset Management is about consistently performing well in all of these
areas of activity in a coordinated manner.
This results in us being able to make informed decisions on how best to spend resources,
in the short term and for the long term, in a way that will deliver the optimum Whole
Life Cost for our assets while meeting the demands of our customers and satisfying the
expectations of our stakeholders.