Pressure to kick-start new national infrastructure developments should not overshadow the huge task of maintaining current projects, says CIEAM.
As they battle to keep their economies moving, governments around the world have put investment in infrastructure development high on the agenda as a nation building and job creation exercise. Plans call for the injection of massive amounts of public money into infrastructure such as port facilities, schools, railways, roads, bridges and so on. Each of these elements has its own set of engineering and maintenance requirements.
In Australia, this imperative builds on a highly publicised, perceived failure of transport and other infrastructure to handle the demands of the movement of people and goods and to support the demands of mineral and other exports in a rapidly expanding global economy.
‘Infrastructure Australia’, a Commonwealth government entity established in 2008, is currently managing the process of prioritising nationwide proposals for infrastructure funding. Th e 500 submissions already logged on its website serve as an indication of the enormity of this task.
While the government is attempting to address the inadequacy of national infrastructure, a less obvious problem remains unresolved in the accumulated backlog of maintenance of existing infrastructure.
Reports by the Institution of Engineers over the last decade point to a low level of maintenance of Australia’s infrastructure.
The maintenance task is escalating. A BIS Shrapnel report in 2000 put the annual cost of asset maintenance in Australia at $10 billion. Its 2008 report puts the annual cost at $31 billion.
Additionally, inadequate ongoing maintenance produces its own costs. Th e Victorian Longford Gas Plant failure in 1998, which caused massive disruption of Victorian industry, was attributed directly to inadequate equipment maintenance and management practices. Th e gas plant failure at Varanus Island in Western Australia in June 2000 resulted in economic loss to the WA economy estimated in excess of $6 billion. Insurance data suggests that the annual cost of asset management failures exceeds several billion dollars each year. Any reduction in the probability of such failures would therefore have a significant and positive economic impact.
Asset maintenance is costly; whole-oflife maintenance costs of major assets can exceed the initial capital cost by several times, with escalating maintenance costs over the lifetime of the asset, which in many cases could be 100 years. Th e pressure to reduce the up-front capital costs of particular assets is an endemic problem in both the public and private sectors, and often results in less than adequate investment in asset maintenance technology and processes. Th ere is a particularly acute risk of this happening in the current environment of economic constraint.
In order to ensure that the maximum economic value is obtained from any major investment in national infrastructure, it is imperative that adequate and appropriate asset management systems and practices are built into the procurement processes from the outset.
Over the last six years, the Cooperative Research Centre for Integrated Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM) has addressed these issues through an integrated program of technology development, management solutions, coordination with national and international industry and research groups, and education and training. CIEAM has established itself at the centre of engineering asset management research and development in Australia, and as the hub of an international network of leading institutions around the world.
Website: www.cieam.com
republished from Australian Innovation 2009 – the print publication
