Geospatial Asset Management Solutions

How do we maintain and repair the nation’s infrastructure, without going broke?

Damon D. Judd

Typical asset-intensive or­gan­izations that have an extensive infrastructure to build, maintain, repair, re­place and ultimately decommission, require a substantial amount of work to be managed. In most cases they have or will invest in some type of asset and/or work management system. This is generally a database application that allows facilities, equipment, vehicles, materials, and equipment to be tracked and to enable work to be assigned to work crews, managed by their supervisors, and reported to upper management in some fashion.
There are several business drivers that dictate when work needs to be assigned and completed to maintain, repair, and operate the assets owned (or managed) by the organization. Some of those drivers include homeland security concerns, prevention of massive infrastructure failures such as the recent blackout in the northeast U.S., adherence to GASB 34 standards for governmental accounting practices, the effects of deregulation on the utility industry, and compliance with various environmental laws and regulations.

What is GIS Integration with Asset Management?
By integrating the capabilities of a Geographic Information System (GIS), which many organizations already have in place, with an Asset Management System (AMS), public works departments, in­vest­or-owned utilities, and other asset-intensive organizations can improve their ability to manage their asset inventories, and do so even more efficiently than ever before. The GIS enables map-based views of the asset and work information that is managed using an AMS.
Because there is a database relationship between the spatial data in the GIS and details of the assets and the work performed on those assets in the AMS, extended graphical display and data analysis functionality becomes possible. In an integrated solution, the graphical perspective can be presented along with the current condition of the selected set of assets. Asset-related information can be spatially analyzed to help identify trends or to determine impacts of proposed operations. Analysis results and trends can be displayed on a map to further assist in the decision making process.

Where are the Benefits?
-- Executive Decision Support (by providing current reporting of asset condition levels and map-based views of the infrastructure assets).
-- Customer Service (by enhancing the customer response level and the details of work orders in a graphical context from the dis­patch­er to the field worker, such as a call center).
-- Mobile Work Orders (by putting current maps with asset details and that day’s work orders directly in the service truck on a mobile device such as a tablet, ruggedized laptop, or PDA).
-- Capital Projects Budgeting and planning of capital projects can be improved by supporting the analysis of various alternatives prior to de­sign. Construction man­agement can benefit from having current maps and asset details for the existing and proposed infrastructure in the project’s geo­graphic area of interest.
-- Operations and Maintenance Supervisors can more easily plan and manage field crews by knowing what equipment is needed and where. Maintenance workers can use daily or weekly work as­signments that include routes and directions to the job, de­tailed reports of asset work history and condition levels, and equipment needed for the scheduled work.
-- Finance and Accounting By track­ing what work is completed where, budgets can be compared against actual costs of maintenance and repairs, cost overruns can be avoided through better planning and tracking of work and asset conditions, and continuous im­provement of the infrastructure value can be achieved.

Why Bother?
-- Cost savings to the organization can be realized by spatially enabling the asset management system.
-- Often the investment in implementing a GIS has already been made.
-- Extending the integrated system throughout the enterprise, including field services, offers many additional benefits to the organization.

Obstacles to Implementation
Unfortunately, there can be many reasons not to geospatially enable an AMS. Most of those obstacles are based on the total cost to implement, security concerns, lack of data standards (or the availability of metadata), complexity of operation (real or perceived), difficulty in coordination and cooperation be­tween multiple groups, and resistance to change.
Many of these obstacles can be overcome by using good project management principles and by incorporating a change management approach that minimizes the risks of introducing new technology into an organization. The downside of not implementing such a solution must also be considered as part of the long-range strategic planning process for any organization that is asset-intensive in its operations.

Conclusions
By integrating the spatial component using a geographic information system (GIS), the asset knowledge base inherent in an organization’s asset management system (AMS) can be better managed, shared, and visualized. Maps with current information become readily available to everyone from field workers to upper management.
Most of the obstacles to implementing such a solution are not difficult technical challenges, but rather require a good change management approach. The changes to the affected business pro­cesses that result from a geospatially- enabled AMS will likely lead to continuous process improvement, thereby reducing maintenance costs, improving customer service, enhancing operational ef­ficiency, and increasing the return to the bottom line.

About the Author
Damon D. Judd is President of Ala Carto Consulting, a private consulting practice in Louisville, Colorado offering GIS and spatial data management services to utilities, energy, local government, and environmental organizations.

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