Accelerating AM Maturity using technology and data science

With the industry undergoing rapid digital transformation and organisations becoming increasingly data-driven, there’s a big focus on the best way to accelerate AM maturity. At 2022’s AMPEAK conference, both data and asset management maturity were key topics.

AssetFuture’s CEO Domenic Fonte spoke about the journey that Asset Managers take in achieving maturity.

The benefits of asset management maturity

So why is asset maturity important? It has a range of important benefits:

  • Line-of-sight: getting full visibility into asset condition enables preventive and predictive maintenance, including the detection of potential failures before they occur as well as setting better maintenance schedules to prevent failure 

  • ISO alignment and compliance: many sectors, such as aged care, face increased regulatory oversight, including compulsory requirements to produce Strategic Asset Management Plans (SAMPS) in accordance with government policies

  • Evidence-based decision-making: accurate information about asset condition enables better decisions, leading to cost efficiencies and lifecycle optimisation

  • Organisational alignment and efficiency: breaking down silos within organisations and leveraging AI and automation reduces error and inefficiency

Achieving asset management maturity is not about technology solutions alone. The journey to maturity involves people, tools and processes, and above all needs buy-in from senior management. It’s a holistic business evolution, not one confined to the IT department. New skills will be needed, people’s roles and the way they work will change, and new tools and applications will be deployed. It’s a learning curve for everyone within the organisation.

Challenges on the road to maturity

Asset Managers face several challenges on the road to maturity. The first is not having an Asset Information Strategy (AIS) to begin with. The scope of an AIS typically includes business processes, systems and software, monitoring (to ensure compliance with information standards), audit and assurance processes as well as benchmarking practices with other similar organisations.

A lack of available and accurate data is another hurdle for asset management. Bad data is highly problematic: Autodesk research estimates that bad data cost the construction industry $1.8 trillion in 2020. Patching up poor data isn’t cheap either: according to Gov.UK figures, organisations spend 10-30% of revenue on handling data quality issues.

Additionally, the cost of data acquisition itself is often an obstacle for businesses as it can be expensive to capture and process. Since the beginning of the pandemic, limited face-to-face access to buildings has created additional challenges for data capture.

4-step approach to accelerating maturity

There are alternative and more cost-effective ways to get the data needed for asset management maturity. AssetFuture is able to accurately simulate entire asset portfolios in a fraction of the time it would take to manually collected data. Using a huge degradation model library and statistical techniques such as predictive modelling and Monte Carlo simulations, our technology can replicate entire portfolios in just hours, without any in-field data collection. It’s a four-step process:

  1. Share the footprint, condition and age of your facilities

  2. Generate a simulated asset register based on sophisticated analysis 

  3. The AssetFuture Platform generates lifecycle intelligence including cost, risk and performance forecasting

  4. Develop templated Asset Management Plans (AMPs) aligned to organisation requirements

NSW Health Infrastructure (NSW HI) is one recent success story. It struggled with incomplete visibility over its portfolio, with disparate and incomplete datasets. AssetFuture worked with NSW HI to simulate its asset portfolio using building condition and size, creating a consistent view of the entire portfolio to support asset management planning. As a result, NSW HI enjoys a consistent approach to TOTEX planning and is able to benchmark performance. 

If you’re interested in how AssetFuture’s technology can help with your own portfolio, we’d be glad to discuss and look at the different ways we can accelerate your organisation’s journey to asset management maturity.