Important trends affecting the future of asset management will be examined at the IPWEA National Conference in Darwin from August 11-15 this year.
In fact, for three days asset management matters will occupy two parallel streams of the six-stream event.
A strong line-up of Australian and international speakers have been selected by the organisers to inspire critical thinking across wide range of asset management disciplines.
Cutting-edge systems, significant case studies, common problems, and matters of future implication are sure to spark debate, both in-conference and at networking sessions.
For instance, the often-asked question of “why engineers and accountants don’t tell the same story” will be a topic introduced by John Howard of Jeff Roorda & Associates early on day one. And on the following day Fairfield Council’s Mick Raby will examine, amongst other things, what happens when current asset management theory comes into contact with local government political systems.
Presentations with an eye to the future will include one by the Chair of IPWEA’s NAMS.AU group, Peter Way on the implications of ISO 55000 standards on infrastructure asset management, and another on the impact of climate change on council buildings by Phil Warne from the City of Whitehorse.
Meanwhile, the Conference host-city itself will also be spotlighted - most notably by a paper on the NT capital’s underground stormwater assets, a 350 km labyrinth of pipes, culverts and pits referred to as “The Big Unknown” by Darwin Assets Manager Nadine Douglas (read her “Your Say” column in this issue, to see why she dubs it that).
Other Darwin papers include one on the hazards of glazing above public areas, by David Lilley of Charles Darwin University, and two papers in the Public Works stream - one about a recent Darwin CBD traffic study by John-Paul Foster of SKM, and another on the city’s parking strategy by Paul Simons of Tonkin Consulting.
Apart from that, there will be numerous other asset management presentations during the conference.
Here is just a small and random sample of some other papers:
Are we making any progress? In a stirring call-to-arms, Aurecon’s Lloyd Arnott will urge asset managers to combat the widely held view that their profession revolves merely around “maintenance” management.
He claims that despite championing the asset management cause for 20 years at IPWEA conferences, many levels of government still yield to short term commercial solutions rather than a whole-of-life approach. Consequently, asset managers now need tools and frameworks to demonstrate that the planning and development of infrastructure is just as important in delivering the required service levels from an investment.
With that in mind, his paper will work through a unique framework which Aurecon has developed over the past two years to assist asset owners in embedding the whole-of-life philosophy into all levels of their organisations. It extracts key elements from both IIMM and PAS55 and is focused on specific and measurable outcomes.
New life for old bridges: Many ageing bridges weren’t designed for today’s heavy vehicles, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be “muscled-up” to cope!
Pitt & Sherry’s Richard Cassidy will reveal how the lives of four such Tasmanian bridges (across the Emu, South Esk, Duck and Mersey Rivers) were extended to allow a significant increase in vehicle loadings. Each bridge was originally designed for trucks up to 32 tonnes, but after relatively inexpensive alteration, they now handle a suite of vehicles extending to 68 tonne B-Doubles.
Some of the innovative techniques involved retrofitting shear studs on one bridge to increase composite action between a steel beam and the concrete deck, while on another bridge bonded steel plates were installed on a cantilevered concrete crosshead to improve bending moment and shear capacity.
Work on the other two bridges involved external post tensioning on a concrete crosshead to improve bending moment capacity, and the installation of carbon fibre strips to increase moment capacity in concrete beams.
Infrastructure expertise: Opus International’s infrastructure know-how will be much in evidence, with several presentations by engineering experts.
Graham Eagles will talk on a challenging project involving a stock effluent collection and disposal facility in near mountainous terrain in New Zealand, while Richard Parkinson will shed light on how wastewater assets and sanitary pipes were rebuilt after the Christchurch earthquakes.
Further focus on water will come from Danny Burkett when he presents on the potential of UV tolerant HDPE plastic sheeting as an alternative to traditional bitumen or roaded catchments to collect water supplies. He will describe processes adopted to improve the volume of stormwater runoff for a small country town that was often subject to water restrictions and water carting.
Phillip McFarlane will then describe a decision support process developed for Dunedin to prepare optimised renewals and maintenance programs for potable water, wastewater and stormwater assets. He will focus on a software tool which produces budget forecasts, future risk profiles and level of service predictions so water utilities gain a better understanding of the trade-offs between investment, risk and levels of service.
Local roads deterioration: ARRB Chief Scientist, Dr Tim Martin will describe how the group developed Australia’s first national local road deterioration models after collaborating with 236 road agencies and monitoring 500 sealed and 100 unsealed roads in various traffic and climatic environments across Australia.
The study now gives asset managers access to a range of evidence based deterioration models to assist in drawing up maintenance programs.
The paper will describe the basis for the models and experience in their use in different areas, including a recent Western Australia application as part of the Roman 11 implementation. It also illustrates the importance of adaptation with an example from the Northern Territory.
Good data only the start: Building up a solid base of asset data is entirely different to transforming that knowledge into meaningful information to influence decisions on infrastructure investment, according to Stacey Lee, Asset Management Coordinator for Gold Coast City Council.
She claims the asset management fraternity worldwide has been highly successful in developing sophisticated systems to gather, store, update and analyse all types of data. But she argues that asset managers are now at the crossroads when it comes to presenting the data in ways which influence key decision makers on infrastructure choice.
She will outline some of the work being done in Australia and New Zealand to improve this situation. She will also share some aspects of a Gold Coast City Council experience where a solid base of asset data was successfully transformed into presentable information that enabled effective decisions to be made around the council’s long term finance plan for the funding of major sporting venues.
Capital works planning: Since 2009 the Sunshine Coast Regional Council (Australia’s 4th largest) has been developing a strategic 10-year capital works program with strong linkage to asset management and priority infrastructure plans, adopted strategies and a long term financial model.
In his presentation, Asset Management & Service Programming Manager, Chris Campbell will explain how the council has gone about this, with particular focus on the re-prioritisation of projects into two categories, namely discretional and non-discretional.
The former involves projects which must be funded to meet asset management and growth requirements and the latter pertains to those which potentially may be funded, depending on the sustainability of the council’s long term financial model.
Proactive asset maintenance: In this presentation Nandini Mehta from NATSPEC will highlight how the proactive AUS-SPEC asset maintenance approach allows councils to calibrate service levels with their maintenance & operations budgets and community expectations. She will also explain how users of the system can prepare documentation for in-house application or for private maintenance contracts, as well as collect records of asset inspections, defects, programmed and prioritised works and monthly works completed reports.
Mountains into molehills: To increase their effective long term asset management planning, the City of Charles Sturt has actively worked on a program of continuous improvement for seven years. Reece Harrison who joined the asset management team just over a year ago will recount three key journeys the team has taken over the last 12 months.
This includes the adoption of IPWEA’s NAMS.AU approach, the installation of a new asset management system, and intensified asset management governance activities across divisions that are driving holistic management life cycles.
For more information on the Conference and registration, please visit www.ipwea.org.au/darwin2013