Asset management guru Jeff Roorda has delivered a fascinating presentation at IPWEA's International Public Works Conference, asking asset strategists to start thinking differently about risk.
"We have to expand our understanding of risk," Roorda said.
"Historically, town planners have planned and engineers have built and accountants have accounted. In the future they’ll all have to work together."
In his presentation, Roorda pointed out that our culture has two 'blind spots'.
"We don't know how to reliably account for or predict potential changes to some of the most important elements in our lives. Basic needs such as health, safety, clean air and water, food, work, recreation and culture are assumed to be always available into the future, even though many people on earth lack many of these basic needs."
And:
"We avoid the apparent complexity presented by the connectedness of all things. The domination of finance and economics to determine how our community wealth should be spent have been driven by our cultural tendency to look for simplistic measure like GDP and ignore all others. we think that if it can't be perceived to be reliably measured, it has no value, until we run out of clean air, water or safety."
7 questions for asset strategists:
- How should we respond to climate change?
- Can you imagine a world with unreliable built and natural assets?
- Have you ever wondered what happens after growth stops?
"Growth may not continue, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing," Roorda says.
- What will happen if there were more old retired people than young working people?
"The way we think about infrastructure strategy has to take that into account," Roorda says.
- What will happen as technology changes keep speeding up?
- What happens if more plants and animals keep dying?
Roorda describes this as the 'canary in a coal mine' effect.
- Why are we so bad at predicting big trends that have affected so many people?
The IPWEA 2017 International Public Works Conference is running August 20-23 in Perth. To view pictures from the conference, visit IPWEA's Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/ipwea/