In the UK for example, the central government owns 136, 844 buildings (ranging from hospitals, schools, courts, prisons, museums, etc.). Their real estate covers 157 million square metres of floor space and is valued at £158 billion (as at March 2022)1. That’s some serious wealth!
But I was shocked to learn that governments often struggle with managing their real estate. I’m not just talking about problems with operating and maintaining the infrastructure. I’m talking about governments unable to keep up with knowing what assets they actually own!
How is this possible? Public infrastructure development is typically financed by money from the public purse (I.e., our taxes), so governments have a duty to manage our money wisely.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. So, if governments don’t have a complete list of the infrastructure assets they own:
- How can they effectively operate and maintain them?
- How can they accurately calculate present and future operational expenditure for their full asset portfolio?
- How can they properly achieve regulatory (E.g., Health & Safety) compliance on all their infrastructure assets?
- How do they know if the infrastructure is being fully utlised?
- How can they make accurate valuations of their asset portfolios?
By not having a full inventory of their infrastructure assets, governments cannot identify opportunities to generate additional value, either by implementing long-term (strategic) asset management plans or by selling off their assets at the highest price.
Without properly managing all of their public assets, governments are effectively wasting capital spend. Assets without proper management eventually shift from being a value-add to a financial liability.
The UK Government Property Agency states that a lack of comprehensive, real-time information about where government properties are distributed around the country is a major barrier to effective decision making1.
SO, HOW DO YOU IMPROVE INFORMATION QUALITY FOR PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE?
Here’s one way the problem could be tackled:
1. START WITH THE OBVIOUS – DO AN INVENTORY OF ALL THE INFRASTRUCTURE ASSETS THAT THE GOVERNMENT OWNS
Locate all of the government-owned infrastructure assets dotted around the country. This task may involve reviewing lots of records (hopefully available in digital format) held in a variety of disparate databases.
Hopefully from the records, other basic information can be captured, such as:
- Size/area of the infrastructure
- What the infrastructure is used for
- Maximum occupancy of the infrastructure (if it’s a building)
- When the infrastructure was constructed
- The materials used in construction
- When the infrastructure became operational
- Remaining life expectancy
Etc.
2. DEFINE THE OIR (ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS)
If governments want their publicly-owned assets to really work for them (I.e., to generate as much value as possible), the second task should be to identify additional information about the infrastructure that would help drive cost-saving initiatives, help increase the longevity of the infrastructure, or would add financial value if the infrastructure asset was to be sold off.
Under the BIM (Building Information Modelling) ISO 19650 framework2 this task would come under the process of defining the government’s OIR (Organisational Information Requirements). OIR is the information needed about a piece of infrastructure to support an organisation’s strategic objectives such as business operations, asset management, portfolio planning, regulatory duties and policy making.
Defining the OIR involves input from people who are involved in strategic decision-making such as those responsible for infrastructure investment. Facilities Managers should also be involved in defining the OIR as they manage asset systems that operate the infrastructure. Even building users could be involved in shaping the OIR as they can provide insights about what a well-constructed, well-managed piece of infrastructure looks and feels like when occupied (in the case of buildings) or when being used (E.g., transport infrastructure).
3. DEFINE THE AIR (ASSET INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS)
Still following the BIM ISO 19650 framework, after the OIR has been defined, the next step would be to establish the asset information requirements (AIR), I.e., information about the asset systems, and/or individual assets (and any critical components within an asset) that enable the infrastructure to function.
A clearly defined AIR facilitates the implementation of an effective operations and maintenance strategy. It enables facilities managers to manage the infrastructure in the most efficient, safe, and cost-effective manner, and supports meaningful long-term asset management plans.
4. CAPTURE THE REQUIRED ORGANISATIONAL AND ASSET INFORMATION
So, we now have a full catalogue of all the government-owned infrastructure, the additional information needed to support strategic decision making, and the information needed to properly operate and maintain the infrastructure.
Now it’s time to go back to those records (held in those disparate databases) to see if any of this information already exists. It’s highly likely that some of the information being sought doesn’t exist, so processes have to be put in place to start capturing this new information.
5. UPDATE THE IT SYSTEMS THAT WILL STORE THE NEW ORGANISATIONAL AND ASSET INFORMATION
IT systems storing information about the government infrastructure may need to be re-configured to accommodate the additional organisational and asset information that has been collected.
6. CREATE AN ASSET INFORMATION MODEL (AIM)
The updated IT systems that now store enriched infrastructure information need to be identified as being part of an asset information model (AIM), so that people know where to look when they want to find any (or every) piece of organisational and asset information associated with a particular infrastructure asset.
NBS (www.thenbs.com) describes an AIM as a collected set of information generated from all sources that supports the ongoing management of an asset3.
The AIM can contain a single IT system, or a network of several IT applications, each storing different pieces of information about a particular infrastructure asset. These IT applications can include:
- Document management systems
- CAFM (Computer Aided Facilities Management) systems
- Spares inventory systems
- Resource planning systems
- Purchasing databases
- GIS (Geographical Information) systems
It may be possible to integrate the IT systems to form a truly connected AIM. If that isn’t possible, users should clearly understand which organisational/asset information is stored in which IT applications, so that the users can quickly access what they need.
7. AND FINALLY…IMPLEMENT AN EFFECTIVE DIGITAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PLAN!
So, the AIM has been populated with enriched information about the infrastructure assets. A fair amount of time, effort, and resource has been dedicated to identifying and cataloguing every government infrastructure asset, defining the OIR and AIR, collating organisational and asset information, populating IT systems with this enriched information, and establishing the AIM.
What next?
The information must now be kept up-to-date.
The infrastructure asset catalogue (with its associated organisational and asset information) becomes out-of-date the moment:
- An infrastructure asset is sold
- An infrastructure asset is refurbished
- An infrastructure asset is re-purposed
- An asset system, and individual assets or critical asset components within a piece of infrastructure are replaced or decommissioned.
(And the list goes on)
The worst thing to happen at this stage is not to properly manage the valuable information stored in the AIM.
Without an effective digital information management plan, the inventory of infrastructure assets will fast become out-of-date and unreliable to use, and the value of the AIM will very quickly diminish. Eventually, another asset inventory exercise will be necessary to create a fresh list of infrastructure assets, resulting in yet more resource, time, effort and money being expended which could have been avoided.
An effective digital information management plan will ensure the information held in the AIM remains up-to-date, relevant, accurate, complete, and easy to access to authorised users.
And the digital information management plan must be coupled with a dedicated information manager to ensure the plan is properly managed.
And there you have it – how to use aspects of the BIM framework to effectively manage information about government-owned infrastructure.
From this point on, there are now plenty more opportunities to generate more value from the infrastructure through implementing (for example) the ISO 55000 Asset Management framework.
Visit www.Six35Consulting.com to learn more about BIM
REFERENCES
| 1. National Audit Office (UK): Managing central government property. Session 2022-23 (15 July 2022) https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Managing-central-government-property.pdf |
| 2. BS EN ISO 19650-3: 2020: Organization and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including Building Information Modelling (BIM) Information Management using building information modelling (Part 3: Operational phase of the assets) |
| 3. NBS (July 2017): What is the Asset Information Model (AIM)? https://www.thenbs.com/knowledge/what-is-the-asset-information-model-aim |
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Medina Jordan is the Owner and Director of Six35 Consulting.
Six35 Consulting works with clients that own, invest in, or manage physical infrastructure, and aspire to implement the BIM (ISO 19650) framework to generate more value from their infrastructure assets. Six35 Consulting specialises in the process-side of BIM.
I identify and implement the correct processes for your business to effectively manage digital information captured from project activities. I cover the full life-cycle of an infrastructure project: Design > Construction > Operations & Maintenance > Disposal.
Effective information management facilitates maximum return on investment (ROI) from the digital technologies used to collect and store information from your infrastructure projects. Quality digital information can be trusted and used to develop long-term asset management strategies for your built assets, prolonging asset life and increasing asset value.
Visit my website at: www.six35consulting.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/medina-jc-jordan