The daily operations of organisations in asset-intensive industries (energy & resources, chemicals, manufacturing, rail, telco, etc.) depend strongly on the performance of their physical assets. As a result, these organisations strive continuously to optimise their asset performance.
At the same time, they are frequently faced with ageing assets, along with environmental, safety and regulatory compliancy requirements that are becoming more and more stringent, adverse weather conditions and environmental threats, emerging technologies and other challenges associated with asset ownership and operation. To add to this, there is the ongoing pressure to reduce costs in combination with shrinking budgets. This gives asset managers the huge challenge of allocating their scarce budget in the most optimal way to their assets.
The emerging discipline of risk-based asset management proved successful for asset-intensive systems, not necessarily by reducing risk, but by using risk to balance the operational performance of the assets against the asset life-cycle cost. Expenditure on assets is rationalised by using an assessment of what risk exposure is acceptable by the different stakeholders, maximising overall wealth for the organisation and society.
Opens in new window