Asset Management Improvement

Improving from where you are now won’t happen by accident.  It takes a clear focus, targeted effort, and a continuous cycle of review, action and improvement to mature your asset management practices over time.

An improvement plan is a great vehicle for “action”.  It needs to be strongly led, prioritised, properly resourced and regularly monitored and reported on.  Having clear targets and well-specified deliverables will help focus your people on the right priorities.

Once your improvement approach is mature you will be able to demonstrate:

• A positive culture and behaviours around continuous improvement
• An established, systematic, continuous improvement programme to enhance Asset Management processes, systems and data to support effective delivery of desired Asset Management outcomes

• Regular benchmarking improvement
• You are looking outside your own industry to capture best practices from other industry sectors
• A rigorous, evidence based process for testing and accepting new innovations.

Asset Management Strategic Support

Often a fresh set of eyes brings a new perspective.  Years of experience working with many local and central government organisations in New Zealand, and internationally, enables our people to provide strategic infrastructure advice.  We listen to your challenges, sometimes bring some new thinking to the table, help you work through your options and provide advice that will enable your organisation to operate more effectively.

We work with you and your team to:

• Identify strategic challenges
• Develop options to solve those challenges
• Make recommendations for action
• Support you through the change management journey

Statutory Planning

With over 20 years experience working in both the New Zealand and Australian regulatory systems, we understand the challenges of gaining environmental approvals for projects that provide the certainty in managing impacts that stakeholders and regulators want, with the desire to retain flexibility in design and construction to realise efficiencies through innovation.

We work with you and your team to:

• Develop and implement strategies to gain environmental approvals and permits
• Coordinate and manage Notices of Requirement and Outline Plans of Work.

Spatial Planning (GIS)

Having your spatially distributed assets captured in a Geographical Information System is a cornerstone to leveraging the power of spatial analysis and visualisation.  Being able to visualise your geographically dispersed information is a powerful planning and analysis tool that provides a more intuitive way to describe what is happening in the real world rather than tables of data.  This information can then be used to present information to decision makers and inform decisions.  As with all business information used for decision-making, data accuracy is important.

We can assist you to leverage your investment in spatial asset data through:

• Data scrubbing
• Spatial element correction
• Data visualisation
• Data analytics.

Valuation Services

Infrastructure valuations are one of those activities that just have to be done.  Your finance team needs the results for the year-end accounts, and your asset managers utilise this information for renewal planning.

There are many benefits to undertaking a valuation using your own in-house team.  Staff can increase knowledge and it will give you a deeper insight into your asset data.  We can provide peer review services to guide you through the valuation process and give Audit NZ assurance that you have followed a robust process and that the valuation can be relied on for financial accounting purposes.

We have a qualified Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA) on our team who has undertaken, led and peer reviewed many valuations. Therefore we are well placed to help you:

• Develop valuation reports or undertake peer review of valuations
• Engage with your auditors and provide confirmation letters to Audit NZ
• Provide guidance on valuation processes, including unit rate databases, capitalisation issues, and useful lives
• Develop valuation and capitalisation policies

Asset Management Planning

In many ways your Asset/Activity Management Plan (AMP) can be considered the “business case” for why and how you deliver services and the key programmes and funding required to deliver those services.  It also importantly supports community engagement on levels of services, costs and options.  It’s also important to consider what your decision makers need when evaluating the options for funding and the risks associated with those decisions.

These plans have evolved over time and unfortunately some have become more focused on meeting the legislative requirements rather than the long term planning of services through infrastructure.

We believe its time to think about the next generation of AMPs with a focus on providing a sound business case for the future needs of your communities.

We work with you and your team to:

• Review your current plans status and effectiveness
• Redesign your framework, and simplify the messaging
• Recommend improvements to the document and processes to develop it to increase confidence
• Facilitate workshops to effectively develop the content of your plan

Activity Stories

If you have ever had trouble explaining what services your organisation provides and how it all works, then activity stories are a good vehicle to achieve that.  Asset Management Plans serve a clear purpose, but are not designed to inform stakeholders and interested parties about your activities in a clear and public friendly way.

We work with you and your team to:

• Scope the content of the Activity Story
• Agree what key messages need to be articulated
• Develop diagrams and clearly written text to explain the activity in a simple way
• Present a well formatted final document ready for publishing