IPWEA Australasia's Asset Management Congress provided nothing short of an amazing, stimulating and challenging journey into the future of asset management.

“Brain drained," “exhausted," “I thought I knew all about asset management – but not now,” “how forward thinking are these speakers," "WOW!”. These were just some of the delegates' comments, and they want us to do it again in two years’ time – but maybe somewhere warmer than Canberra! (Darwin sounds good.)

All the speakers were exceptional, with Jeff Kennett being ever the statesman as he challenged: “Where is (either side of) the Government’s 50 year big picture plan for Australia? Why don’t we have a national water plan for such a fundamental resource to aid our arid country (this would help our struggling farmers more than money); why aren’t we using our once-famed Aussie ingenuity to become the food-bowl nation servicing (and profiting from) our northern Asian neighbours?”  This set the scene for an intensive, big-picture two days of asset management discussion, with delegates from every state of Australia and New Zealand.

These challenges, when coupled with the macro-economic impacts of infrastructure for Australia, plus the fact that the Federal Government has approved an additional almost 12 million people to immigrate during the next 30 years, means that we need to build a city the size of Canberra every year to accommodate them and their infrastructure requirements.

All of this set the scene for a roller-coaster ride on the future demands of our assets. KPMG told us what our future cities and towns will look like in 2030 and what our communities will be expecting of us and what sort of infrastructure they will be requiring. We are well short of delivering that.

As custodians of the nation’s largest infrastructure asset base of around $438 billion, local government must start adjusting their thinking on how they manage today’s assets. In reality, today’s new assets will be in their peak usage stage in around 25 years’ time.  But have we built these assets for the demands of the digitised era?  Have we built-in climate change effects? Have we allowed for re-purposing in their design? Will they meet the rapidly changing expectations and needs of our community in a digital 2030 environment?

Can we rebuild our rural regions and ease the impending apartment dwellers and commuter congested lifestyle of our burgeoning CBD metropolises? How much value capture has local government negotiated, and how many JVs has your council entered into to revitalise your region, shifting away from a reliance on rates and government grants?

There are too many troubling questions and challenges, yet these issues were all addressed by speakers who were all at the top of their fields, no exceptions. If you missed this congress, then you missed something amazing – just spend one minute now and check out the detailed program against these points that I’ve raised.

Fortunately, through our partnership with Talking Infrastructure there is a podcast series from the Asset Management Congress dealing with re-thinking infrastructure decision-making for the 21st century. 

We encourage all IPWEA members and the organisations they serve to download, listen and contribute. 

We will shortly be issuing an Infrastructure Action Plan for the Future emanating from the congress for all members to comment upon and then use in discussions with their elected officials and government discussions.      

Robert Fuller 
CEO, IPWEA Australasia