Water
Ons klimaat verandert. Het regent meer en harder, het grondwater verzilt, de milieunormen worden scherper en we moeten bezuinigen. Hoe kunnen we blijven zorgen voor schoon drinkwater en voor het zuiveren van afvalwater? Hoe zorgen we voor een omgeving die niet te droog of te nat is? En zonder dat de kosten stijgen?
Asset management can help the water sector with this. The water sector manages facilities with an estimated replacement value of 100 billion euros. It is important to make optimal use, maintain and replace these ‘assets’. Assets are all the physical (business) resources and facilities that a company or organization needs to perform the work properly. Assets in the water chain are, for example: pumps, sewage pumping stations, treatment plants, waterways, dikes, buffers and discharge pipes. Asset management focuses on minimizing costs over the entire lifetime of these facilities, without undesirable risks. This covers the entire process of investing and financing, maintaining, renovating and replacing. Water boards, water boards, drinking water companies and municipal sewerage companies can use asset management to control costs in the water sector, without losing sight of quality.
Asset management goes beyond the management and maintenance of the assets. Asset management is also about risks. The risks involved in asset management are risks in the areas of safety, environment, process, costs and image. Only when a conscious choice has been made around the assets, based on the costs, performance and risks over the total lifespan, do you speak of asset management.
According to Pragma, asset management can be done perfectly well in the existing maintenance organization. It is important to make new connections in the organization, to work with the specific themes and to invest the roles well. It must be clear who the asset owner, the asset manager and the service providers are. The proper investment of the asset management roles stems from the need to have a system in order in which this is guaranteed. We call this the asset management system: the maintenance organization is set up in such a way that processes, tasks, responsibilities and powers are laid down. Asset management can be integrated into the organization’s own business model or system, for example in the INK model. Pragma helps with that. The asset management system can be certified according to ISO 55000.
An asset management system is not enough. If organizations in the water chain want to get started with asset management, more is needed. The ‘culture’ of the organization is an important aspect here. How do your people act? Are they risk conscious? Do they show behaviour that contributes to your asset management objectives? In short, companies have been managing their assets for years. But does that also mean that they are optimally engaged in asset management?
Asset management companies means that the processes in terms of people, methods and resources are set up in such a way that a basis is created to relate performance, risks and costs of the assets and to create an optimal balance from here. Pragma can support projects to actually conduct asset management in the water sector. So that all projects are tackled result-oriented, cost-consciously and people-oriented.
Structural asset management can save costs. That’s because it helps to make smart choices (“doing the right things”) and to perform the management tasks professionally (“doing things right”).