• Planning Modules

FHWA → Planning → Processes → Tribal Transportation → Planning Modules → Asset Management

Asset Management

II: How do I Implement Asset Management?

What is Asset Management?

Asset management is a process that:

• Is a data driven decisionmaking process that looks at both financial and technical issues, and
• Considers asset condition and performance to find the best maintenance and improvement investment

Good asset management practice is based on having reliable knowledge of what assets are owned, how they are performing, what investments are being made including maintenance, and how your tribe’s actions are likely to affect performance. This knowledge involves routine collection of good data, and turning the data into useful information from which you can make decisions.

Every tribe has different needs and circumstances; therefore, the approach to asset management is not the same for every tribe. Asset management provides a decisionmaking structure for getting the best performance from the tribe’s transportation assets given the available funds. Implementing asset management involves making decisions based on information about the performance of an asset and on how that asset can best support the overall tribal transportation network. This module focuses on how to set up an asset management program that supports the asset management decision process.

Steps in Asset Management.

There are five basic steps to implementing an asset management program. We will discuss each step in detail but first, here is a summary:

Step 1: Create Asset Inventory. A transportation asset is a part of the road or other transportation system that your tribe relies on to move people and goods. In order to begin your asset management implementation effort, you start by getting an understanding of what assets you have. You then decide what assets to include in your budgeting process, and what information is needed about these assets.

Step 2: Define Asset Management Scope.

The next step is to determine what you want to do with your asset management program. The scope you develop sets the stage for your tribal government’s asset management program.

Step 3: Prepare Your Organization for Asset Management. An important part of asset management success is having the people in your organization ready to own the asset management improvements identified in Steps 1 and 2. This includes the tribe’s organizational units agreeing on the scope and understanding who is doing what.

Step 4: Develop the Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP). The TAMP is the blueprint for the tribal government’s asset management program. It is a checklist for monitoring accomplishments and coordinating each transportation unit in the tribal government, so that each knows what the other is doing.

Step 5: Use Tools and Techniques to Implement Asset Management. There are many tools and techniques available to help implement transportation asset management. They include management systems of asset inventories and methods for making smart decisions on ways to reduce risks. Deciding on which methods and tools are best for tribal government and then applying them is an important step.

Step 1: Create an Inventory of What You Have - A Transportation Asset Inventory

What is an asset? An asset is an individual, separately-managed component of the infrastructure, such as a bridge deck, road section surface, or streetlight.^[3]

What is an asset inventory? It is a record of the tribal government’s transportation assets. Data describing each asset is an important element of the inventory. The following types of data are kept for each of the assets:

• Geographic location
• Age and condition
• Organizational unit in tribal government that manages the asset
• Information about the use of the asset

1. - Traffic volume
2. - Number of passengers

• Construction history
• Maintenance activities
• Cost
• An electronic database of relevant documents

Pavements and bridges have separate requirements for structural characteristics, geometrics, and functional assessments such as load ratings and clearances. Rolling stock (i.e., trucks, buses, transit vehicles) and equipment may include data such as manufacturer and model, purchase and warranty information, and repair and maintenance history.

Should I develop a comprehensive asset inventory or just pick the most important assets? This depends on the resources available to your tribal government. Key factors are the human and budget resources available to create and maintain an asset inventory, and funding available for data collection.

Most asset management programs keep an inventory for pavements and bridges since they are a big part of the transportation budget. Table 1 shows a list of possible assets that can be in a transportation asset management program.

OK, How Do I Start? There are many different guides and tools available to tribal governments on how to do asset management. Some of these resources are included in Appendix A. As stated earlier, each asset management program varies depending on the organization, what is most needed, and the tribal government’s capacity to manage the asset management program. Consider these steps.

What information should I keep about assets? Inventories can be used to keep a wide range of data about a tribal government’s assets. An example is shown in Table 1 below. You can manage your data in many different ways. Examples include spreadsheets, electronic databases, and special-purpose management systems. No matter what system is used, the objective is to ensure the recorded data is current and accurate. Further, the data can be viewed by all those who need to see it. Many resources exist on what information can be collected about each asset. A quick source of information for getting specifications on the data to be collected is to find an organization similar to your tribe and get their data collection manual.

Table 1: Example of Asset List

Asset Type	Data Attribute
Roadway	Road name and/or route number Location (begin and end milepost) Descriptions and dimensions including: - ROW width - number of lanes - lane widths - speed limit Traffic volumes and loads Jurisdiction data - ownership - department - political boundary Condition (i.e., pavement rating, road bed condition) Maintenance activities (type and dates) Pavement type Construction date and update Any special classification such as: - tourist route - historical significance - presence of school bus or transit routes
Medians, curbs and gutters	Location (longitude, latitude or milepost) Type Description and dimensions Maintenance activities Condition measure Cost
Sidewalks and other roadside features	Location Description and dimensions Surface Maintenance activities Condition measure Cost

Table 1: Example of Asset List - Continued

Asset Type	Data Attribute
Drainage	Dimensions, type Location Maintenance activities Condition measure Cost
Traffic facilities	Location and type Quantity Maintenance activities Condition measure Cost
Bridges and major culverts	Location Elements Condition/performance Dimensions Restrictions Maintenance activities Cost
Street lighting	Pole location Material, type, dates, ownership Lamp type location, dates, ownership Bracket type, dates Power supply authority details Electricity lines company interconnection details Maintenance activities Condition measure Cost

Step 2: Define Asset Management Scope

Once you complete the transportation asset inventory for your tribal government, you need to decide how you want to better manage your assets - the asset management scope. You can review your asset inventory and decide which assets are most important to the tribal community. These may be the assets you choose to focus on first. Based on the information you collected in Step 1, you can evaluate where you have the most need. In general, the bigger the scope of your asset management program, the more data you will need, the more sophisticated the analytical tools will have to be, and the more expensive and time consuming the program may be to implement.

Clearly defining the scope of the asset management implementation effort will make it easier to add value to your tribal government and complete the actions that create the value. Since asset management can cover so many different aspects of tribal government’s work, defining a scope is important.

Asset Management Decisionmaking. Asset management helps improve decisionmaking about the best actions to take during the life cycle of your transportation assets. For example, is preservation of an asset worthwhile? Is the best decision to do nothing, or should you take an action such as maintain, repair, rehabilitate, or replace an asset?

Asset management helps tribal governments select the most economically efficient set of actions over the life of an asset while maintaining the services that asset delivers. Two different life cycle profiles are illustrated in Figure 4 in relation to condition. In the first profile,condition is allowed to deteriorate to a worse level under the replacement alternative compared to the preventive maintenance alternative. The preventive maintenance alternative features a larger number of actions, but they may add up to a lower life cycle cost when the time value of money is considered.

Figure 4: Preventive Maintenance versus Replacement Approach

Asset management tools help analyze the cost-effectiveness of preservation and preventive maintenance opportunities and the overall size of these programs. Figure 4 above illustrates how preventive maintenance actions conducted early during an asset’s life cycle is a cost-effective strategy. To fully address this important policy issue it may be necessary for the scope of asset management activities to include smaller, preventive maintenance actions and routine maintenance, even though many of these actions might be funded under maintenance budgets and performed by in-house crews.

Many agencies approach maintenance by addressing the assets that are considered to be in the worst condition first, sometimes called a “worst first” approach. Asset management suggests moving to a decision process that includes preventive maintenance, to help extend the life of transportation assets. Moving from a “worst first” approach to focus on preservation of existing assets may be one of the key asset management decisions your tribal government makes. Depending on the condition of the network, a change to a preservation approach after years of addressing the assets in the worst condition first will result in a temporary drop in conditions and potentially some assets falling below acceptable condition standards. Over the short-term, changing to a preservation strategy may create a larger backlog of needs; however, in the long-term the overall performance of the asset classes should improve.

Step 3: Prepare Your Organization for Asset Management.

An important ingredient for good asset management is the involvement of all tribal government units to ensure that they are on-board and moving forward together toward asset management improvements. Getting tribal governments ready to implement asset management involves developing an organizational change strategy, integrating asset management into the tribe’s business processes, and establishing asset management roles for staff.

Change Management is a Critical Part of Asset Alignment should be considered at every stage of asset management development and implementation to make sure that different functions within tribal government work together. This does not happen by accident. It requires leadership, communication, collaboration, and a constant awareness of the relationship between goals and the ways to achieve them.

Implementing asset management can happen in many different ways, with leadership in different parts of the organization. The ultimate goal is to have all of the pieces aligned, but the road to achieving this is dependent on where your organization is currently, how fast it is realistically able to move forward, and selection of the best implementation path.

Successful organizational change includes the following activities:

• A consensus among tribal leadership of the need for and benefit of change
• Development of a vision of changes and strategy
• Communication of that vision regularly
• Alignment of actions so that they are consistent with the vision
• Involvement of tribal leadership to empower you to make changes consistent with the vision
• Celebration of the change effort with short-term successes

Asset Management Roles and Responsibilities. Rather than being a separate unit of an agency, asset management is typically a structure for coordinating a set of important functions among existing organizational units. Therefore, having clear roles and responsibilities defined and understood throughout the tribal government is especially important for successful asset management. One key role needed in asset management implementation is the asset management champion. The champion is responsible for coordinating across governmental units, keeping a focus on implementing an asset management plan, and communicating constantly with all stakeholders. An example job description for this role is in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Example Asset Management Champion Job Description

Asset management is a team effort that needs many different skills and capabilities. Creating new roles and managing the development of asset management is an important task. It requires thinking about individual, team and tribe expectations. The responsibilities of key players may change during different stages of asset management implementation. As with any change, there may be times when differing viewpoints must be reconciled as your tribal government moves forward along the asset management implementation path.

Step 4: Develop the Transportation Asset Management Plan

The Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) is a central component of the asset management program. It is a blueprint that outlines your management strategies, how much money is needed for implementation, and the business management processes to support the program. TAMP is the management tool that brings together these processes with stakeholders to achieve common goals and strategies. It is also the action plan for implementing the scope you prepared in Step 2.

The TAMP formalizes and documents key information including:

• The services that your organization’s assets deliver now and in the future, and why they are delivered
• The condition and performance of your assets
• The planned improvement actions
• How you are planning to manage your assets cost-effectively throughout their life cycles

The TAMP can be thought of as a “business plan” for the tribal government.The TAMP may be a singe comprehensive document or a library of smaller documents.It can also serve as a communications tool.
Organizations can and do develop asset management capabilities without a written plan; but having a plan helps to speed up the process and reduces some of the communication problems that come with organizational change. The written plan is a clear sign that tribal leadership supports the change and is committed to seeing it through.
A successful asset management plan will be owned by the tribal government, not by a particular department or group within government. It should tell the story of the services the agency is responsible for delivering, and how it will utilize and manage the assets it has under its control for that purpose.
The TAMP is a living document which needs to be reviewed and updated regularly. Many organizations do this on an annual basis, as an input to the annual budget process. The asset management review period should not go beyond three years since it will lose relevance if it is not updated. Table 2 shows an example outline and contents for a TAMP.

Table 2: Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) Content Example

Section Name	Description of Contents
Executive Summary	A stand-alone high-level overview of the plan, used to communicate the content to stakeholders.
Introduction	Sets the scene, provides a description of tribal government’s mission and goals, its role and the roles of other parties, and the purpose of the plan.
Performance Measures	Tribal government’s mission is broken out into key objectives, transportation services and performance measures. Identifies any Federal or tribal laws and regulations that impose mandates or constraints on performance or the implementation of asset management. May present strategies to overcome regulatory barriers. May also identify needs to close identified performance gaps. Identifies laws and regulations for performance measure criteria to guide the analysis for each asset type.
Growth and Demand	Identifies what drives or influences change on the transportation network. Assesses how future growth and demand for transportation services will impact the demand for new or better assets and asset maintenance in the future. Also describes tribal government’s current and desired capabilities to measure demand and growth as they affect asset management.
Asset Inventory and Performance	Information about assets, including condition and performance summaries, asset life cycles, and identifies critical assets. Life cycle strategies and management methods for all activities relating to the assets An overview of current and desired capabilities in pavement and bridge management, and other asset management systems for life cycle management.
Financial Plan	Brings together all needs identified in the TAMP into medium and longer term financial cash-flow forecasts to support the more detailed annual budget process. An overview of funding sources, constraints on the use of funding, long term funding needs and other aspects of the budgeting and funding processes that impact asset management.

Table 2: Transportation Asset Management Plan Content Example - Continued

Section Name	Description of Contents
Transportation Asset Management Practices	Describes current tribal government processes supporting asset management decisionmaking, and reports current status of asset management practices. Describes the information systems and tools used to support asset management. Describes data needs and quality expectations.
Improvement/ Maintenance Plan	A work plan for improvements and/or maintenance activities, in order to move from the current state to the desired state in the agreed time frame. Includes a description of risk factors and anticipated problems.
Appendices	Tables and documentation in support of the preceding sections.

Step 5: Use Tools and Techniques to Implement Asset Management.

As stated at the beginning of this chapter, good asset management practice depends on having reliable knowledge of what assets are owned, how they are performing, what is being done to them, and how your organization’s actions are likely to affect performance. This knowledge involves routine collection of good data, and turning that data into useful information to help you make decisions.

Many tools and techniques exist to support your asset management program. The list of resources in Appendix A provides you with more detail about these tools and techniques. Below is a discussion of the following tools and techniques: Risk Management, Life Cycle Management, Maintenance Planning, Program Delivery, Asset Management Systems, and Data Collection and Management.

Risk Management. Risk management is an important part of asset management. Risk is the threat to transportation operations caused by extreme events, other external hazards or from asset failure arising from any cause. Some examples of causes of asset failure are poor condition, unexpected loading, or poor work practices. Applying risk management to look at decisions being made about your transportation program makes it possible to identify threats and opportunities, assess and prioritize those threats and opportunities, and determine strategies so that decisions can be made on how to deal with potential risks.

A risk is a future event that may or may not occur. It may have a detrimental or beneficial impact on the tribal transportation system. Risk management is the systematic identification, assessment, planning, and management of threats and opportunities faced by your system. Steps taken to manage risk include 1) gathering information about future events, threats, and opportunities; 2) identifying what and how those future events trigger threats and opportunities; 3) assessing the likelihood and impact of risks; 4) prioritizing risks by their expected value and by their relative importance to your transportation system; 5) determining ways to deal with the risk; 6) carrying out risk management strategies, monitoring the implementation of strategies, and reevaluating risks.

Life Cycle Management.A large and important part of your asset management work is your response to deterioration caused by traffic, weather, time, and environmental factors. A tribal government’s response to deterioration is typically called preservation. Life cycle management allows you to determine the best actions for your assets at its various stages of its life cycle. The stages of an asset’s life cycle are:

• New construction (asset creation), which includes justification, scoping, design, and construction or acquisition of assets.
• Preservation, which involves actions to slow down or correct the deterioration of an asset to extend its useful life. It does not entail structural or operational improvement of an existing asset beyond its originally designed strength or capacity. Preservation may include repairs, corrective actions, reactive maintenance, routine maintenance, periodic maintenance, and preventive maintenance, during which time the asset is used and maintained in working condition.
• Operations, which involves activities to improve the efficiency and safety of traffic movement on the existing transportation system. This includes tasks such as incident response and traveler information.
• Replacement, which involves the reconstruction, or partial or complete replacement of an asset. Replacement typically restores an existing asset’s level of service, capacity, or strength to original levels, or near to them, and sometimes involves replacement of the asset in a different location or configuration.
• Functional improvement, undertaken when improvements beyond the original level of service, capacity, or strength of the asset are needed. This will often occur as part of an asset replacement project. An example would be the replacement of an old, under-capacity bridge with a new structure with greater capacity and strength.
• Disposal is the final stage in an asset’s life. The nature of infrastructure assets is that many will never be disposed of, that the levels of service they provide will be maintained indefinitely as the existing structure is continually rehabilitated, or is replaced when needed by new assets. However, some will eventually become unnecessary through road realignment or other changes and will then be disposed of.

Maintenance Planning. Being smart about how and when you maintain your assets can give you better performance at a lower cost. Maintenance activities can typically be organized under planned, reactive, and routine maintenance. Planned maintenance is when a maintenance action is applied while the asset is still in good condition, extending the asset life by preventing faster deterioration. Planned maintenance effectiveness can be enhanced by the development of a maintenance management plan —a formal, detailed plan that describes the maintenance activities, schedules, objectives, and resources needed for the maintenance of the tribal transportation system.

Preventive maintenance is intended to preserve a tribal transportation asset. It is performed before an item either fails or reaches the point where an unacceptable level of performance has occurred. An example of preventive maintenance is crack filling sealed pavement surfaces. This is aimed at preventing the entry of water and the consequent weakening and increased deterioration of the pavement structure.

Reactive or unplanned maintenance includes emergency repair, routine maintenance, and corrective action. These include actions such as emergency or other unscheduled maintenance or repairs that arise as a response to observed defects or performance problems (e.g., small bridge deck repairs, traffic signal repairs, incident response). Routine maintenance involves un-programmed non-urgent maintenance activity done by crews that are scheduled on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Good maintenance planning involves ensuring that resources are allocated to planned maintenance activities while conducting reactive and routine maintenance.

Program Delivery. Program delivery is the process a tribal government takes to implement and deliver its plans and programs. It is the period where the resources that have been allocated are utilized. Key aspects of asset management during the program delivery phase are:

• Selecting a delivery method that yields the best results in terms of cost savings, output, and outcome
• Maximizing efficiency during delivery so that cost is minimized
• Maintaining flexibility to adjust delivery mechanisms if the chosen path is not yielding the desired results
• Minimizing the negative impacts to customers and stakeholders during delivery
• Monitoring to ensure that the goals and objectives driving the resource allocation decisions are being met

Asset Management Systems. An asset management system is a collection of hardware, software, data, and processes that support asset management business processes. A management system is used to collect, process, store, and analyze information about assets; to develop sound maintenance and rehabilitation strategies; and to schedule, track, and manage work. A management system typically includes:

• Technical information about asset characteristics, condition, and performance;
• Financial information concerning current asset value and the level of resources needed to maintain and improve assets to meet established goals and service standards;
• Planning information about recommended or scheduled work on assets; and
• Historical information about work accomplished and investments made.

Systems can be as simple as spreadsheets that list assets and their condition ratings to more complex, graphical systems with data maintenance, simulation, optimization, and reporting capabilities. Systems for major assets with long life cycles, such as pavements and bridges, merit greater levels of sophistication because they support decisions about significant capital investments. Systems for lower value, shorter life cycle assets, such as pavement markings, guardrail, or signs, can be simpler and more focused on maintenance planning and management. The typical components of an asset management system are listed in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Typical Components of an Asset Management System

Data Collection and Management. A good asset management program is supported by data and information that helps decisionmaking at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Having good data that is used for decisionmaking is challenging. It requires the collection of the right data, making sure the data is accurate, storing the data so that it is easy to access, turning the data into a format that is easy to use by decision-makers, and having decision-makers use the data to make good decisions. Keeping the data current and useful is called data management. Good data management practices include understanding the business framework for why you need the data, data standards that allow your organization to connect different data sets, and a data governance structure that clarifies who is responsible for what aspect of data management.