Country: Canada
Key Area: Transportation
Services: Asset Management,Asset Management Plan Development,Transportation Asset Management

Nine months to assess and radically change the way the Province of Ontario in Canada manages its infrastructure may seem a tall order, but that was exactly the challenge faced by a combined Opus and KPMG team. Ontario, like many other provinces in Canada had reached a point where it was realised that business as usual was no longer good enough. Ageing infrastructure and increasing financial pressures requiring a new approach to management and planning.

Ian Greenwood, Opus’ technical team leader for the project, who was based in Toronto at the offices of KPMG from mid 2007 to early 2008, says their approach was to develop a provincial wide standard – the Infrastructure Asset Management Framework – for asset management that would cover assets as diverse as roads, prisons, theme parks, schools, hospitals, court rooms and transport assets.

While the project commenced in 2007, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal had initiated an Ontario Asset Management Working Group in 2005 to raise awareness of asset management best practices.

“Both the Ministry and the working group were making progress, but for most, asset management was either a new task or a small part of their overall responsibilities,” says Ian. “This project was about providing a structure for the implementation of leading best practice.”

“As a team we provided a strong mix of engineering capability, business and financial management acumen. A total of 23 people (including 10 Opus staff) from three companies (local engineering company Morrison Hershfield also provided inputs), based in 10 offices across three countries provided the inputs to what was to be a significant amount of work. The need to bring leading best practice across such a diverse asset base required a broad range of specialists.

“While there are many asset management frameworks and guiding documents in use throughout the world, what sets the Infrastructure Asset Management Framework apart is the focus on putting asset management in context,” says Ian. “A lot of effort went in to determining who does what, not just what needs to be done. If you look at the asset ownership models used in Ontario there is everything from directly owned assets (such as roads), assets owned via fully controlled agencies (hospital boards etc), through to subsidies being paid to privately owned long term care facilities. The role of each party across the range needed to be clearly articulated to ensure the right skills were put in the place.”

The framework involved setting the strategic direction of performance measures, the methodology for reporting assets at the provincial level, valuation and condition assessments, risk management, undertaking needs analysis and the development and delivery of an optimised works programme. It also provided a template for the development of an asset management plan, life-cycle costing and multi-criteria analysis. “As with any project of this size, some existing practices will need to change,” says Ian. “However with the support of KPMG and our consistent message for the need to change, the projects steering committee was very supportive of the final report, with many Ministries already implementing the framework.”