Maintenance Management Practices for Linear Assets

Linear assets are those that are geographically dispersed and connected to each other via a network,

such as roads, pipelines, etc. Examples include Utilities, Public Works, Mass Transit systems, and these

continuous assets are maintained in segments. Their monitoring and maintenance is crucial to

maintaining productivity and often times, critical service levels. The establishment of pro-active

inspection, condition assessment, and a process to perform predictive analysis of these assets is

important to ensure that services are not interrupted, which could alienate customers and dramatically

increase costs.

Linear asset maintenance challenges are:

1. Infrastructure that grows older each year becomes difficult to maintain. 2. Compliance regulations. 3. Assets are distributed across various geographical locations. 4. Identification of the assets and the network is difficult, since assets are often underground and

layered.. 5. Adhering to safety regulations is difficult while meeting required environmental conditions and

delivering cost-effective, reliable service. 6. Assets may be both location centric as well as component centric in make-up. 7. The impact of how these assets perform often involves both B-to-B and B-to-C relationships and

business processes.

Best Practices for extending the effectively of Linear Assets

Maintenance management software with an architecture that provides flexibility in the way asset

hierarchies and attributes are defined is ideal for enterprises that have to manage linear or distributed

assets. This flexibility is required in order to centrally manage assets that can be location centric,

equipment centric, linear, or combinations of all three attributes. Once assets are defined, tagged, and

inventoried, then ongoing asset tracking functionalities, including the cost of the assets, their current

and depreciating values and their value at the time of retirement, can be streamlined. Additionally,

usage and conditions throughout the asset lifecycle can also be measured.

Unlike industrial plant environments where operations most often are focused around B-to-B customer

relationships and processes, the operations - and the impact that linear asset effectively has on those

operations - almost always affect consumers directly. And the impact of any interruption of service can

be much more personal in nature. Therefore, preventive maintenance software for linear assets must

also incorporate the ability to trigger work orders based on a well thought out array of conditions and

best operating values and guidelines for those conditions. This must include multi level notifications,

triggers that can be set on asset levels as well as component levels, and often, a GIS interface that can

be used to efficiently manage work orders throughout a wide and potentially large geography. The

reporting and analytical features provide reports on the usage, repair and value of the assets, the

productivity of labor and timeliness of response to either consumer driven service requests, or work

orders initiated by out-of-spec condition assessment inspection results.

Advantages

a. Automated maintenance management software provides precise information on not only the assets themselves, but workforce efficiencies, costs, and forecasts on labor, outside services, suppliers of tool crib inventory, and capital equipment if necessary.

b. An effective CMMS facilitates workflow, communications and decision making by integrating financial management applications and any array of critical systems throughout the enterprise and the enterprise supply chain.

c. Streamlined processes that facilitate preventive maintenance and provides an insight into the costs of repairs.

d. High visibility into the assets, their locations, and all labor and parts associated with management of those assets today and in assessing budgeting patterns, staffing costs and purchasing decision for the future