There are not a single citizen in India who is not concerned about the mis-management of the public assets. Many a times they have witnessed newly laid roads excavated, not properly maintained public utilities and huge loss due to wastage and inefficiency. It is very common in our country for the people to blame politicians and settle down with the thoughts of 'Chaltha hai'.

Are you engineers responsible for this huge loss our country is facing ?
What is your role in asset management?
What can you do to improve the situation?

The most important part is the knowledge of asset management, and incorporating this from the planning stage in to the projects. We witness people running around sustainable and green technologies. What is more sustainable and green than a well managed system?

With E-Governence on the way, we have brought about a paradigm shift in the way governence is carried out.
We also require GIS based tools for better decision making, but there are few aspects in every project which needs to be integrated at planning stage itself to help decision making and sustainability . Are we making sure that these basic principles have been adhered to?

1. Include preparation of asset inventory as part of the project.
2. Develop a conditional assessment and rating system for assets.
3. Assess remaining useful life of the assets.
4. Determine asset values and its replacement costs.
5. Define the level of services to be provided, based on customer demand and regulations.
6. Define process to assess the existing performance.
7. List the assets depending upon ranks of criticality.
8. Conduct failure analysis, determine probability of failure and list assets by failure type.
9. Analyse the failure risk and its consequence to develop detailed mitigation plans.
10. Develop a detailed operations and maintenance plan (predictive maintenance).
11. Cost and benefits of rehabilitation.
12. Calculate life cycle costs for critical assets (for cost benefit analysis)
13. Develop a sustainable rate structure.
14. Develop a funding for reserves from current revenue.


Here are some resources and tools to help you do that.

Compendium of best practices in water infrastructure asset management - Compiled and edited by Jay Bhagwan.

CUPSS is a free, easy-to-use, asset management tool for small drinking water and wastewater utilities. It provides a simple, comprehensive approach to implementing an asset management program and developing effective asset management plans. CUPSS is a computer-based program that allows users to baby-step their way into asset management and comes loaded with example data and tutorials.

Download CUPSS here.

Visit the EPA asset management website for plenty of informations on asset management

http://www.epa.gov/owm/assetmanage/

The Model National Municipal Asset Valuation Manual (Jan 2009) by Ministry of Urban Development can be downloaded below.
http://www.niua.org/projects/fire/asset%20valuation%20manual%20final.pdf

The environment agency developed carbon calculator is attached below.

An example asset inventory and condition assessment for water utilities.