the state of asset management in the netherlands

8/6/2019 The State of Asset Management in the Netherlands

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Proceedings of the 4th World Congress on Engineering Asset ManagementAthens, Greece

28 - 30 September 2009

THE STATE OF ASSET MANAGEMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS

Y.C. Wijniaa, P.M. Herdera,c

aDelft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Jaffalaan 5, 2628BS Delft, The Netherlands

bD-Cision bv, PO box 44, 8000 AA Zwolle, The Netherlands

cNext Generation Infrastructure Foundation, Delft, The Netherlands

The world of infrastructures for energy, transportation, water and communication is constantly changing. It is not

only that the use is ever increasing, recent years have demonstrated that there is a move from the public domainto a more privatised setting. On the one side, customers become more critical and demand better quality andbetter service, whereas on the other side a need arises to limit the (public) costs of infrastructures. To cope withthose conflicting demands many infrastructure organisations have introduced Asset Management, an integratedapproach to balance costs, performance and risks. However, in discussions at the Asset Management Platform (agroup of over 30 asset managers from all infrastructures in the Netherlands, established in 2007 by the NextGeneration Infrastructures foundation) it appeared that many infrastructure asset managers had great difficulty ingetting beyond the first promising step. As a first step in the formulation of a new research programme aninterview round was conducted with a number of infrastructure asset managers to get a better feel for what theprecise barriers and challenges were. In this paper the results of the interviews are presented. Key findings werethat Asset management acquired a strong foothold, but that it was a bottom up process which did not reach thestrategic level. There were still difficulties in convincing top management of the strategic value of assetmanagement and in aligning organisational goals with technical and operational standards. Furthermore, it was

recognized widely that asset management required a change in maintenance paradigms and that assetmanagement should focus on life cycle costing. Nevertheless, asset management was generally considered to bean engineering discipline, even though lots of efforts were spent on creating support for the initiative. Some assetmanagers explicitly recognized the social and cultural issues and acted on this by training their asset managers insocial skills like empathy and persuasiveness, however this was not common. Neither was the extensive use ofasset performance models for decision support, as most asset managers preferred to rely on historical data.However, at the same moment, many asset managers reported problems in accessing those very historical data.Based on these results, a research programme was defined in which academics as well as practitioners willparticipate. The outlines of this programme will be introduced in the paper.

Key Words: infrastructures, asset management practice, asset governance, research agenda

1 INTRODUCTIONInfrastructures have always been a vital part of society. In the past, most cities developed at a crossroad of different modes

of transportation, as this was a great opportunity for trade. The first infrastructure planners were the Romans, with theirextensive road network and water distribution system. Over the years, the concept of infrastructure has expanded from roadand water to incorporate gas (1812), rail (1829), telecommunication (1843), electricity (1879) and airlines (1914)1. It appearssociety has become more and more dependent on the delivery of goods and services from/to far away, and thus on theinfrastructure that supports delivery. The use of energy in our personal lives is ever increasing, and people got used to the ideathat someone at the other end of the world is not far away.

Most infrastructures have seen a continuous development of technology since their establishment. The 8 lane highwayscannot be compared to the single track carriage ways of the Romans and the internet is miles away from the first telegraph.

1 Years according to wikipedia

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However, in the institutional setting development seems less dramatic. Virtually all infrastructures started as a private,commercial enterprise. As government recognized the importance of well functioning infrastructures for society, many of thoseinfrastructures were put under government control, either by institutionalizing them (the infrastructure provider becomes agovernment agency), acquiring the shares of the private companies or by strict regulation. Recent years have demonstrated areversal of this movement, as many sectors have been liberalized and deregulated and many infrastructures are (re)privatized.This happened in the Netherlands for instance with respect to rail (1993), electricity (1999), and gas (1998). The general ideabehind all those initiatives is that markets would provide better services at lower costs than governmental bodies could.

Coinciding with this focus on commercial quality, customers became aware of the non-commercial qualities of theinfrastructure. It has become more difficult and more expensive to plan new infrastructures (at least, the visible ones) as peopleclaim a right to the view they always had, and that the landscape should not be disturbed by the new infrastructure. Incidentsthat happen (for example substantial power outages) are treated as news items, and the availability of information on thoseincidents is immense2. Infrastructures might therefore appear more risky, and new regulations are put in place to safeguard thepublic against the perceived greediness of the commercial infrastructure operators3. Infrastructures are under pressure, asone could say. This is shown in the figure below.

LimitedBudget

Less PublicAcceptance

Higher Legal

Rquirements

IncreasingPerformace

requirements

Infrastructure system

Figure 1: The pressures on infrastructure systems

It is up to the infrastructure operators to resolve this issue. In this light, it is no surprise that Asset Management has gainedthe attention of many infrastructure operators. Asset management, after all, is the profession of balancing cost, performanceand risk over the lifecycle of an asset. For example, the PAS55 process standard defines asset management as:

Systematic and coordinated activities and practices through which an organization optimally manages its

physical assets, and their associated performances, risks and expenditures over their lifecycle for the purpose of

achieving its organisational strategic plan.

However, when getting into the details of the infrastructure system, it becomes clear that the total operation of aninfrastructure not only depends on the physical assets, but also on other elements, like information systems, data, standards andprocedures, employees, capabilities and culture4. These elements are only to a certain extent independent of each other. Overtime the elements might influence each other. It is therefore probably better to speak of elements that are loosely coupled,

instead of independent. This is shown in the diagram below, where the black box infrastructure system of figure 1 is replacedin which the constituting elements are represented as masses, connected by springs. The metaphor of a mass-spring system isexplicitly chosen, as it provokes the images of objects reverberating and exerting forces on other elements. The metaphor alsodemonstrates another characteristic many asset managers are familiar with: you can increase the strain on the system to achievea higher (financial) performance, but it either will come back at you in future (for example, postponing maintenance andhaving to replace the asset in a few years because of irrepairable damage) or have a (delayed) impact on the performance.Short term financial gains can be achieved, but it is much more difficult to sustain them.

2 Supported by the telecommunications infrastructure. In the recent Schiphol plane crash (25th feb 2009, 10.40 am) reportswere on the internet at no later than 10.42 am (twitter)

3 In this debate, people seem to miss that the people working in those operators are to a large extent the same as when it

was a state owned enterprise, preserving the culture and values of the old days4 This is recognized by PAS55, but not in the definition

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Assets Systems Data

Personnel Capability Culture

Standards Procedures PracticesSoftware

Hardware

Bioware

LimitedBudget

Less PublicAcceptance

Higher LegalRquirements

IncreasingPerformace

requirements

Figure 2: The mass-spring metaphor of Asset management

In the Netherlands, many infrastructure managers have embraced asset management. As the Netherlands are a smallcountry, most asset managers regularly bump into each other, and several initiatives to share knowledge on the profession weredeployed. In those initial contacts it became clear that knowledge sharing alone was not good enough, some new knowledgehad to be developed as well. None of the participants was really certain where the next steps of asset management could leadthem. The Next Generation Infrastructure Foundation (NGInfra) took up the challenge of knowledge development andestablished the Asset management platform in spring 2007. In the startup meeting of this platform, a very high representationof corporate (high level) infrastructure managers was present, as over 90% of the invited people attended. Representedinfrastructures included road, rail, electricity, gas, water, sewage, telecom, and airports. However, in the first meeting itbecame apparent that asset management had very different connotations in the diverse infrastructures. As this was a seriousbarrier for developing a shared research agenda, the first step of the platform was to establish the state of Asset Management inthe Netherlands. In this paper, the questions, procedures and key findings of this research are presented. Based on those results,a research agenda and programme was formulated and kicked off. The outlines of this programme will be introduced in thepaper.

2 THE SETUP OF THE RESEARCHThe research aimed at arriving at a representative list of issues in asset management that would cross-cut all infrastructure

sectors. Therefore asset managers in 7 different infrastructure and related sectors were interviewed. These were:

1. Gas and oil2. Electricity3. Rail and road4. Drinking water5. Waterways and water protection6. Telecom7. Asset Service providers

The focus of NGInfra lies with the long lived infrastructures of sectors 1 to 5. To establish whether the technology was adetermining factor, the 6th sector was added. In telecom, technology and demand is developing much faster than in the others,resulting in short lived assets. As outsourcing of services is a hot topic in the field of asset management, the 7 th sector wasadded, to provide insight in the specific issues related to outsourcing from both sides.

The core objective of the research was establishing the key issues in asset management, for which NGInfra could developknowledge development and dissemmination programs. To achieve this, 17 interviews were conducted, which provided a

wealth of insights. It was not the purpose of the research to judge asset management in the Netherlands, nor to provide abenchmark. The interviews were conducted by Joost Jongerius, Tom Meijerink and Jan van Miltenburg of Evers and Manders

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consult in commission of the Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation 5. To provide as much room as possible to theinterviewees to talk about the issues close to heart, the option of open interviews was chosen instead of standardized interviewswith structured questions. To facilitate comparing different interviews, a checklist of topics to be addressed in the interviewswas prepared. This checklist is presented in table1.

Table 1.Overview of interview protocol.

Main topic ItemThe concept: How do you define asset management?

Which assets? Which performance criteria How do you determine the criteria Development of asset management within the organisation

Organisation Asset Owner or Service Provider Position of asset managent within organisation Reporting line to board of directors Number of disciplines/employees involved Balancing and prioritizing between disciplines Who determines budgets for investment and maintenance?

Implementation Are there asset registers How is condition of assets established and monitored? Are the data sufficient for analysis Are there methods for risk analysis used? In which phases of the lifecycle (design, operation, decommissioning)

are those employed? Are there maintenance and investment plans?

Knowledge aquisition How is knowledge acquired and managed? Most important knowledge gaps? Expected benefit of extra knowledge? Use of benchmarks?

Room for improvement:What would be a realbreaktrough?

Organization Culture Tools/knowledge

As mentioned earlier, the objective was establishing the key issues in asset management across all sectors. However, thisdoes not mean that only the average knowledge gap will be presented. The purpose was both illuminating where participants ofthe platform can learn from each other, possibly facilitated by a knowledge dissemination program of NGInfra, as well asestablishing where (university based) research was needed to advance the profession. To achieve this, the differences between

and within sectors provide a much wealthier insight than the average value.

3 DIRECT RESULTS3.1 The concept of Asset Management3.1.1 Asset management definitionAll interviewees agreed that the concept of Asset Management was on the efficient delivery of desired performance. But

this is an empty statement, as it can apply to many forms of management. It only becomes meaningful if the considerationswhich fall in the realm of asset management are further specified. With respect to this, three streams could be recognized:

5 Jongerius, J. Meijerink, T., Miltenburg, J. van, Added-Value Performance, Infrastructure asset management in theNetherlands, a study in seven sectors, Evers & Manders Consult BV, June 2007.

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1. Asset management as the professionalization of maintenance and operationIn many organisations (of Asset owners) Asset management was limited to the operational part of the Asset life cycle.

In those organizations, the production function (in cooperation with the maintenance function) was responsible for runningthe assets. Key objective was availability, supplemented with a pressure on operational costs. In the 1990s condition basedmaintenance was introduced, together with tools like FMEA and FMECA. Even though life cycle management was oftenmentioned in that period, the focus was still on the reliability of current assets and not on total cost of ownership as theconcept of life cycle management promotes. Questions on the need for a high reliability were often not asked. Asset

management was often not involved in decisions on investment, or sometimes not even in determining the maintenancebudget. Only recently, risk analysis was introduced, and then often limited to individual assets and components. Thinkingabout the asset base and the organization as a holistic entity is still in far future. This vision of asset management can bebranded as bottom up asset management.

2. Asset management as part of an organizational performance strategy.A completely different approach is to take the organizational strategy as the starting point for asset management. Asset

owners have assets for a reason, and it is up to the asset manager to help the asset owner in achieving these objectives asefficiently as possible. This means determining maintenance for current assets, but also determining the right investmentstrategy to arrive at a better portfolio of assets, or sometimes even challenging the objectives, as they might be veryexpensive to realize. Some organizations might call this performance or service management, others refer to the term riskbased asset management. The reason for this is that in many infrastructures, no financial gains can be achieved by extrainvestments, just improvements in performance. All activities and investments are thus basically risk mitigations, hence

the name.

3. Asset management as concept of service deliveryThe service providers active in the field of infrastructure assets see Asset management as a means of extending their

service offering. Traditionally, asset owners commissioned the construction of new assets, either turnkey or only assubcontractor for an internal project leader. The trend over time has been in the direction of a broader service offering,including design, operation and maintenance. These DCOM 6 contracts often have long running times. Problems incontracting often regard the over specification of requirements as a means of risk management by the asset owner.Therefore, service providers would like to take up the role of asset manager, where they can discuss the end performancetargets with the asset owner and think of the best option to deliver this value. It is like the transition that can be witnessedin telecom. First, backups needed to be made on the computer or server itself, but because of high speed internet access, anonline backup service is achievable currently. The asset (the backup tape unit) is thus replaced by a service.

As can be concluded from this impression, asset management is mainly limited to the operational level, but is developinginto the tactical domain. Few organizations have moved asset management into the strategic domain.

3.1.2 Performance criteriaA number of organizations has to deal with performance criteria that are imposed by external bodies. Road and rail

infrastructure has to comply with certain levels of availability, water has an extensive body of quality standards, the highpressure gas transport infrastructure has strict safety risk limits. However, many of those obligations are on a high level andnot directly applicable in day to day operation. Asset managers therefore have a role in translating the infrastructureperformance criteria into asset performance criteria and internal targets. But alignment between organizational goals and thetechnical performance criteria is weak. One of the reasons for this is the lack of representation of asset management at thestrategic level. The top level sees the added value of asset management, but has a limited view on what asset management can

mean (often limited to improving maintenance and operation). Only in a few cases the top level acts as a real asset owner andtries to think what can be achieved with current assets instead of how the cost for the current operation can be reduced. As aconsequence, the asset management professionals try to formulate meaningful objectives for themselves and then try to gainsupport for them. The resulting paradox is that asset managers, as they are not involved in the strategic debate, only cansuggest improvements to the current situation. This is expressed by lower costs of the improved, thus reinforcing the (wrong)image of asset management as a tool for cost reduction and thus reducing the probability of being invited to the strategicsessions. Only a in a few organizations the asset manager presents the asset owner with different scenarios for cost andperformance development.

6 Design, Construct, Operate and Maintain

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3.2 OrganizationAs has become clear in the previous section, asset management is in different stages of development in different sectors

and companies in the Netherlands. This is reflected in the organizational position of asset management. In many cases assetmanagement is part of the production or maintenance function. In some cases asset management is a separate department withdirect representation in the board of directors of the infrastructure manager. However, most infrastructure managers are part oflarger conglomerates, and in none of the organizations asset management held a position at the corporate level. If it had a board

representation, it was in the board of the business unit. An issue addressed in the interviews was whether asset managementwas a line or a staff function. In none of the organizations asset management was a true staff function. The intervieweesviewed this as the right way, as they would fear asset management as a staff function would be perceived as top down and thusprovoke resistance. Building the asset management capabilities bottom up was perceived to be the better option. The result isthat many asset managers indicate a large number of employees is involved in asset management. It also means that assetmanagement is on the map and has acquired a strong foothold.

Another observation is that asset managers tend to have a technical background, even though many recognize the need for awider view on the world than only the technical. But they also seem to agree that it is easier to train an engineer in economicsthan to train an economist in engineering. However, despite the wide recognition of the importance of the social side of assetmanagement, only a few organizations actively encourage their staff to develop itself in that direction by offering trainingcourses.

3.3

Implementation

3.3.1 Availability of dataThe data exist but are not accessible. This was the central theme of all interviews. Some claimed this was a legacy

problem7, but in other cases the data simply did not exist. Assets would have been constructed over multiple decades, and datamight not have been recorded at all at the construction, or badly maintained, or lost over time. Some asset owners could noteven tell for certain how much assets they owned. This might be hard to imagine for an asset manager working in a productionplant where one sees the asset one owns. But in infrastructures, assets are distributed, so you do not necessarily know where tolook. Furthermore, underground infrastructures cannot be seen at all. At best, their existence can be inferred from aboveground connections, but what and where is not detectable. Another issue mentioned in many interviews was the missingquality of fault restoration data. Often the precise cause of the failure was not recorded, which is a vital piece of informationfor the asset manager. Despite these shortcomings, asset managers tend to be pragmatic. Even with only 80% of the dataavailable they can make the right decisions. Nevertheless, still a drive exists to get more and better data. In this respect onlinemonitoring systems gained much attention.

A concern that many asset managers expressed was that much of the data was experience in the minds of the employeesand not as a factual recording. Getting the real data out instead of history colored by rules of thumb was regarded as a bigproblem. This was further amplified by the uneven age profile of the organization. Employees of asset managers tend to be inthe second half of their working life, with many not very far away from retirement.

3.3.2 Methods and toolsOne of the themes in the interviews was the use of tools and methods for asset management. With this respect, a division

could be made between tools and methods for maintenance and operation on one side, and tools and methods for investmentdecisions. For the first set, the focus is on registering assets, classifying criticality and optimizing the maintenance strategy.

Investment decisions rely more on the prognosis of future behavior and need for maintenance.

Tools for maintenanceIt was found that a number of (IT) tools is used. Every organization seems to have a tailor made solution for their

case. These are often adaptations of the commercial available suites like SAP, IBM MAximo or D7i, oftensupplemented with excel for registration of asset and data. In itself, the choice of the tool is not exciting: all toolsdeliver comparable features. However, the lack of standardization within organizations forms a barrier tocentralization of asset management.

What can be observed is that there is a paradigm shift happening in the field of maintenance. In the late 80s,preventive maintenance was seen as the way to reduce costs of the installations, as it limited the share of unplannedmaintenance (outages) in the total costs. But nowadays, preventive maintenance is only applied when and where it is

7 Data only available on paper or in singular database

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really needed. Maintenance is further diversified into use based maintenance, condition based maintenance, andcorrective maintenance. The latter one means accepting the risk of asset failure.

Tools for investment decisionsIn many cases, the asset managers were not involved in the strategic investment plans. The initiative is often taken

at the commercial departments. However, the need for maintenance of the new investment seems to have acquired afoothold in the business case models, and therefore asset managers tend to get involved in the decision makingprocess in a later phase. However, predicting the need for maintenance seems to be a key (and difficult) issue. The

history of existing assets can provide some clues for investment decisions, but it is uncertain whether the future assetwill behave comparably. In this respect two factions seem to exist. One group of asset managers is building models topredict future behavior, where the other sees them as too theoretical and tends to focus on gathering historical data.

One conclusion can be drawn from these interviews. Most asset managers used to think in terms of fixed budgets, whichwere spent according to best knowledge. But recent years have shown that asset managers are forced to build a business casefor their cash needs.

3.4 Knowledge acquisitionIn the interviews, knowledge gaps and knowledge acquisition was addressed. A clear differentiation between knowledge on

assets and knowledge on asset management could be observed Knowledge gapsThe major knowledge gap is on asset behavior, especially the long term behavior and prediction of the long term

need for maintenance and (re)investment. Those long term predictions are not only important for the asset owners, butas well for the asset service providers. In general, asset managers think that they have good knowledge on assetmanagement itself, and they do not indicate a knowledge gap in this field. They see a need for more knowledge oncontracting, as the trend is more towards outsourcing services.

Knowledge acquisitionAlthough asset managers have (external) technical courses in their training portfolio, external knowledge

acquisition is not important with respect to building knowledge on asset behavior. As mentioned earlier, knowledgeexist within the internal organization, and efforts focus on documenting the internal knowledge.

External knowledge acquisition tends to focus on asset management in a broader sense, and especially (asset) riskmanagement. Besides courses also many asset management conferences are visited. These provide new ideas, but ittends to be very difficult to apply the acquired ideas in the home environment.

A final element is sharing knowledge directly with other organizations in the sector, but the extent varies widelyover the sectors. Some multi sector initiatives exist.

3.5 OpportunitiesThe opportunity for improving the profession of asset management was addressed as a final theme in the interview. A

number of opinions is shown below with regard to the functions and objectives of the Platform:

Donts Dos Discussion group Lobbying Combined meetings of asset owners and

service providers

Task force| Lobbying Promoting asset management at top

management Asset management Hub Modular courses Knowledge centre on tools and methods Demonstrate generally applicable methods

and tool

Link academic knowledge to practice Facilitator at standardization of data

Note that lobbying is both mentioned as a do and as a dont. A trend in the opinions is the interest in knowledgedissemination. Providing master classes, training courses, being a knowledge hub. A number of interviewees would welcomean independent body that could help them in judging the added value of new and improved tools and techniques.

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4 KEY FINDINGS1. Asset management is not yet at the strategic level

Even though asset management is still a juvenile science, a significant progression has been achieved. Almost allinterviewed organizations implemented the first asset management initiatives around 2002, followed by establishing separateasset management groups or departments around 2004-2006. Most of the time has been spent on acquiring support for assetmanagement, working bottom up. In many organizations asset management originated in the functions of maintenance and

operation, and is still regarded as the professionalization of those functions. However, over the years asset management movedup from purely maintenance decision to judging investments on their maintainability, and thus moved to the tactical level.Nevertheless, asset management is still regarded as a cost centre, and efforts should be spent to save costs. Many investmentsonly result in risk reduction, not in extra profits. Business cases therefore often show a negative result, with the rare exceptionthat reduced maintenance cost justify the investment. Analyses based on total life cycle cost and organizational risk are bettersuited to convince top management. Asset management then turns into a profit centre, a necessity to reach the strategic level.To achieve this, alignment is needed between organizational goals and technical norms and standards, but this is lacking inmany organization. Translating the organizational goals into asset performance criteria could facilitate alignment, and couldlift asset management to the strategic level.

2. Paradigm shiftWhere up until a few years ago mainly use or time based preventive maintenance was applied, currently condition based

maintenance seems to be the norm, supplemented with corrective maintenance for non-critical assets. Use based preventive

maintenance is only applied if it is really necessary. This is strongly linked to the concept of lifecycle costing. Trying tominimize maintenance cost for existing assets can be a silly thing if assets are available on the market with much loweroperational costs, for example because they have higher energy efficiencies. Then the asset should be replaced and notmaintained. The concept of lifecycle costing is gaining interest, but it is certainly not widely applied.

3. Performance models and dataA key element of asset management is predicting the asset performance and the maintenance need of the asset. However,

only a few asset managers relied on models to predict this, as many regarded the models as too theoretical. Most tended to relyon extrapolations of historical data. Paradoxically, at the same time most asset managers complain on the quality andavailability of historical data.

4. Soft issues are importantEven though asset management was generally considered to be an engineering discipline, most asset managers recognized

the importance of the non-technical issues like economics and social elements. Many spent lots of efforts on creating supportin the organization. Some even developed specific training modules for the social skills like empathy and persuasiveness,although this was not common.

5 RESEARCH AGENDA: TOWARDS ASSET GOVERNANCEBased on the interview results, a research program was defined in which academics as well as practitioners are

participating. The outline of this program is introduced in this section.Much of the research published in the area of asset management seems to deal with maintenance and operation. This is a

good thing, as many issues the practitioners face today is related to maintenance and operation. Asset management withoutattention for maintenance and operation would be empty. Nevertheless, the interview results suggest that it is not the biggestissue asset manager face. That is more in the area of showing the added value of asset management to the whole organization,

even if the costs of managing the assets would go up. Currently, asset managers tend to be involved in cost cutting inmaintenance, in order to prove the value of asset management. However, we strongly feel that asset management should bemore about discussing what the assets could and should deliver in relation to what the company needs them to do. In somecases, it might be wiser to increase the asset management budget as it would reduce the need to build new assets. In other casesit might be better to build new assets, as the cost of increasing the output of the existing assets could be much higher. For newassets, proper attention for the operational costs over the full asset life should be given, as these can outweigh the purchaseprice by many times. As long as asset management is confined to the maintenance and operation function, companies will notget the full benefit of an integrated approach. They still might build or acquire new assets that are hard to manage, or that arenot needed if the current assets are managed properly8.

We strongly feel that this strategic part of asset management should be addressed in our research program. As a start, wemade a rough division of the field of asset management into four groups:

8 On AICHE meeting spring 2003 in the Kurhaus (Scheveningen), BP presented the concept of the phantom plant, whichwas the sum of all production losses. This phantom plant proved to the biggest of all plants.

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- Institutional embedding: This deals with how public values are embedded, how interaction with the regulatory bodiesis organized, which strategic goals are allocated to asset management, how they are measured and so on. It is aboutthe mission and values of asset management

- Internal organization: This deals with the business processes, operating models, authorization, change management,capability development and so on. The key theme is how to guarantee the organization structure fits the mission andvalues.

- Operational excellence: This is about fine-tuning of what you are doing. In our view, many of the maintenancemanagement initiatives fall within this category.

- Contracting: This is both about the make or buy decision (in relation to outsourcing) as it is on the type of contractand the process of contracting in case the decision is on buying. This can be on all levels, from financing (PPS) to thecontract itself (only services or DCOM). Theme is how to assure that you get what you want.

Crosscutting these four topics are a number of general themes that need to be researched. These are:- Maintenance and replacement: Many infrastructures are old and might need replacement or extra maintenance. How

to determine what is best, and how to prepare the organization for the significant increase of work if the assets were tobe replaced.

- Human factors:. In the end, it is people who determine the success of an infrastructure. How to address this properly,what skills and competences are needed?

- Innovation and transition: The use of many infrastructures is changing over time. How to integrate this into assetmanagement.

- IT systems and support: A key issue addressed was the availability of data. How to make certain the right data gets tothe right people at the right time?

Together, these can be grouped into a matrix.

Maintenanceand

replacement

Humanfactors

Innovationand

transition

ITsystemsand

support

Institutional embeddingInternal organisationOperational excellenceContracting

This is a rough structuring of the asset management field. Based on the interviews, we feel that the most challenging andneeded topics are institutional embedding and internal organization. One could brand this as strategic asset management, butwe feel asset governance is a better name. After all, it is about the structure of asset management, and not on the strategicdecisions.

6 CONCLUSIONAsset management as a profession has made a significant progress in the Netherlands in the past years, and has acquired a

strong foothold in many infrastructure managers. It has moved up from operational decision regarding maintenance to a moretactical level, regarding the maintainability of future assets, but has not reached (given a few exceptions) the strategic level. Toreach this, alignment between organizational goals and technical asset performance criteria is needed. However, almost nopractitioner really mastered this challenge until now. It is at this point that the academia could provide support. Therefore ourcurrent research with regard to asset management focusses on linking asset management goals to organizational goals. Theauthors prefer to brand this asset governance, to differentiate it from the (maintenance and operation based) operational andtactical asset management.

Acknowledgment

This research was sponsored by the Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation, www.nginfra.nl.

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the state of asset management in the netherlands

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