1.03 Demand Analysis

The energy landscape is shifting with the rise in electrification of transit and the rise of renewable energy shaping a new energy era that is changing the way we think about infrastructure decision making. This presentation will articulate how electrification of transit and an increase in renewables will impact medium and long-term infrastructure planning by providing examples and a practical perspective (case study) to demonstrate how Asset Management decision-making played a vital role in a utility company’s response to this change. This utility company is a key contributor to several electrification initiatives. They recognized the challenge associated with these initiatives and the overall success of the first implementation phase with minimal disruption to current operations. They are also preparing for electrification of the government transit’s first all-electric bus garage to support future procurements of battery-electric buses (eBuses) and will be working on the design and implementation of charging systems infrastructure across the city(?). Over the past 20 years, more than 50 renewable energy systems have been installed on City buildings and properties. In 2020, the city developed recommendations for the utility to achieve greater outcomes for energy efficiency, demand management, and renewable energy. The city also mandated installation of renewable energy systems on all buildings, where feasible, by 2020. The rate of development in electrification and technology in the transit sector is faster than implementation of major infrastructure developments; changes in demand patterns impact everything from the transmission and distribution networks to generation, dispatch and peak-load system capacity design; so it is not possible to “wait and see” before committing to infrastructure investment decisions. This presentation will cover how the utility is dealing with these changes by ensuring an appropriate long-term decision-making framework is in place to assure business continuity and reduce the impact on climate because it poses a particular risk for asset owners and operators. AMCL will present best practices for long-term decision-making and how the impact of change should be taken into account during the development of long-term infrastructure planning processes, in the context of a public utility.

Around the turn of the 21st century, municipalities began using the term asset management (AM) to refer to a broad range of processes that span the continuum, from managing short-term asset maintenance to long-term asset investment planning. Over the last two decades, AM has been accepted as an umbrella term that refers to the processes that work together to answer the following: When, why, and how should we spend money on infrastructure assets to ensure they meet evolving societal expectations? But the traditional approaches to developing AM processes—extremely granular asset inventories, age-based spending need forecast models, complex level of service metrics—have frustrated organizations, cost them millions, and not practically helped to answer this fundamental question. In recent years, a number of AM champions have developed a consumer-based approach to realize value from assets in the achievement of societal objectives. Clear processes create an asset expenditure to asset performance relationship that helps set overall spending levels and enables a living management system that’s used to develop dynamic prioritized short-term spending plans. This approach enables organizations to engage with their customers/clients to balance asset performance (level of service) expectations with financial affordability. This Asset Stewardship Quality Management System resets the AM paradigm by bringing clarity to what AM processes should do and how enablers (data, people, technology) can help. The tangible impacts resulting from the new AM paradigm include a reduction in the granularity of asset registers, improved accuracy of measuring asset performance and tracking asset spending, and confident spending need forecasts to ensure infrastructure systems can effectively underwrite desired societal progress. These tangible impacts are realized through addressing all three enablers: improving data management and data collection activities, providing a training program to staff, and leveraging innovations in hardware and software technologies.

Many organizations have implemented processes and tools to collect data to facilitate informed decision-making. Often, they will seek out best practices and measures to assist in decision-making or rely on technology to guide their basis. In many cases, however, these same organizations approach a gap in tactical deployment and in the ability to draw a connection to the follow-up or pre-emptive actions required to derive value from assets. We'll review the processes for establishing a framework for alignment and priority setting while looking at the techniques used for resiliency and risk management using a technology-agnostic approach. We'll review potential data sources that can be leveraged for decision-making and can reflect the needs and current state of the business environment. Additionally, we'll discuss the relationship and application to the decision-making process.  

Most organisations have implemented processes and tools to collect data to facilitate informed decision-making. Often, they will seek out best practices and measures to assist in decisionmaking or rely on technology to guide the basis of decisions. However, in many cases these same organisations approach a gap in tactical deployment and the ability to draw a connection to the follow-up or pre-emptive actions required to derive value from assets. This presentation will review the processes for establishing a framework for alignment and priority setting, while looking at the techniques employed for resiliency and risk management using a technology agnostic approach. We will review potential data sources which can be leveraged for decision-making and which reflect the needs and current state of the business environment. Further, we will discuss the relationship and application to the decision-making process. An overview of the fundamental outcome of key performance indicators and visualized metrics will be demonstrated. Finally, we will investigate the influence on decision making and the level of data confidence.

In this presentation that was given as a keynote at MainTrain 2017, John Hardwick explains how the data captured while we are managing maintenance can be leveraged by the business to make critical high-level asset management decisions. The presentation makes very clear the distinction between "managing assets" and "asset management" and illustrates the interrelationships between them. 

This presentation is designed to assist the attendees to understand the concepts and principles of asset management.  It will then develop the vision for the maintenance and reliability organizations in an asset management compliant organization. The attendees will leave the presentation with a set of guidelines to insure that their maintenance and reliability organizations can properly support their company's asset management initiatives.