Nipawin Municipal Infrastructure Conference 2015: Lessons from Early Adopters

This week Nipawin is hosting the third annual Municipal Infrastructure Conference. Last year Kindresley hosted 200 attendees. This year I am a presenter; I speak at the last session before everybody leaves Thursday afternoon. Here are my notes from this morning's sessions.

 

·         Extensive experience in Australia with asset management; ten years earlier than in Canada

·         Asset management is a communication process

·         Organizations should be accountable and transparent

·         Fundamental questions

·         Key issue: do we have enough money to maintain, renew, and upgrade infrastructure to meet community needs?

·         Does the lack of funding present a risk to the community going forward

·         Identifying risk means planning to mitigate the risk

·         Search for “National financial sustainability study of local government” “Australian local government associations”

·         Poor data leads to poor confidence in conclusions leading to questionable decisions

·         Australian states much more involved in asset management

·         Asset management is to balance performance with life cycle costs with risks and opportunities

·         Be good at telling the story

·         Admin is to communicate the possibilities including risk, knowing the consequences

·         Credible AM plan

·         Provide

·         Afford

·         Consequences

·         It’s about trade-offs by balancing costs, service levels and risk

·         Corporate responsibility is about informed decision making

·         AM is not about budget bid

·         ISO 55000

·         Assets

·         Not based on perfect world

·         Asset plans should not be based on the perfect world

·         80% of municipalities in New South Wales is unsustainable because they are based on perfect world rather than on realism

·         Balance quality of the service level against what we can afford

·         What is affordable level of service?

·         NAMS Canada: national asset management strategy

·         “All the stuff the engineers want us to do but we don’t want to do.”

·         Deferred stuff effects other decisions, asset plans reinforce the story and communicate the consequences

·         Move from asset management to integrated planning

·         Establish purpose statements for each department per Shellbrook

·         If we don’t raise taxes it either: didn’t communicate it or it wasn’t important

·         If there is a potential risk that something could go wrong, if that risk were to happen, whose fault would it be?

·         Who did you tell?

·         What risk is accepted has to be communicated to Council and they make the decision

·         Ensure that decisions being made are done so with full knowledge of the consequences, good or bad