OPTIMISED OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE TO CURB WATER-INSECURITY AT RUSTENBURG
February 7, 2017
7 BENEFITS OF mSCOA-COMPLIANT INFRASTRUCTURE ASSET MANAGEMENT
March 7, 2017
Effective operations and maintenance (O&M) support the provision of services and bolster sustainable economic development. The following three strategies will enable a sustainable O&M environment for governments to deal with a burgeoning global demand for economic and social infrastructure.
INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT
Economic infrastructure – transport, water, electricity, and telecommunications - enables socio-economic development with the support of social infrastructure – government buildings and public facilities.
Across the globe population growth, rapid urbanisation and aging legacy infrastructure are placing greater demands on city governments. While a global consensus maintains that infrastructure is crucial for sustainable economic development, governments still try to solve the problem by funding expensive new capital projects. Constraints on public budget and inadequate project control/implementation however negatively impact new ventures with dire consequences for service delivery.
In times of economic uncertainty, more efficient and effective infrastructure asset management practices are imperative. According to a 2014 World Economic Forum (WEF) report, the solution lies in the too-often neglected domain of O&M.
THE DANGER OF NEGLECTING O&M
The authors of Strategic Infrastructure: Steps to Operate and Maintain Infrastructure Efficiently and Effectively 1, maintain that authorities need to make the most of their existing asset base to increase asset productivity and longevity. The existing political bias towards funding new assets results in:
Neglect of maintenance and asset resilience
Unnecessary user costs
Negative environmental and social externalities
3 STRATEGIES TO SUSTAIN O&M
In a bid towards more holistic infrastructure lifecycle asset management, the WEF report 2 highlights three broad strategies that enable a sustainable O&M environment:
1. Increase the utility of infrastructure
Apply demand side management
Reduce downtime
Apply a customer-centric approach
Use smart technologies to enhance user experience and refine asset performance
2. Decrease the total costs of infrastructure:
Implement lean automated processes
Optimise procurement and outsourcing
Conceptualise and embed sustainability into routine operations
Enhance stakeholder communication and cooperation
3. Increase value of infrastructure over its lifetime
Invest in preventative and predictive maintenance
Control excessive asset consumption and stress
Enhance disaster resilience
Prioritise life-cycle management approaches
Enhance efficiency of project delivery
IMQS’S O&M SOLUTION
IMQS supports systematic lifecycle asset management with its Maintenance Management Module. The GIS-centric digital O&M solution integrates, automates and unifies all maintenance-related data sources, processes, and reporting. Users gain an informed and interactive view of their O&M environment, including early warning signs of asset failure and potential material shortages based on available stock-levels.
As an integrated and spatially enabled solution for Incident Reporting, the Maintenance Management Module:
Facilitates planned scheduled or unscheduled maintenance
Enables the notification of responsible teams with correct incident information
Helps reduce the risk of making decisions based on dissimilar data sets
Supports informed decision-making
Enables coordinated workforce execution
