By David Jenkins
This has been a transformative decade for asset management, as the sector has adopted new philosophies, practices, and technologies. Some of these trends might seem disparate and unrelated, but in many cases, an integrated approach, combining one or more of these within the same project, can offer wider solutions and benefits in terms of sustainability, resilience and cost.
These emerging trends do not exist on their own but in the context of a wider suite of tools that asset managers can use as solutions to meet their challenges.
In asset management, digitisation and technology are practical tools to be applied to the physical world by a new generation of trained and specialised professionals.
Harnessing these trends in projects designed around resilience in the face of a changing climate, for example, can drive data-driven decision-making, which can deliver more powerful outcomes.
Key emerging trends
Use of Natural Assets alongside Hard Infrastructure
Perhaps the most significant trend is the use of natural assets instead of traditional hard infrastructure or the integration of them alongside hard solutions.
Integrating a waterway, mangrove swamp, or forest into an infrastructure solution can help deliver sustainable municipal services over the long term. It can lower capital, maintenance, and operating costs than an engineered solution.
Using a natural asset instead of a grey or engineered asset to provide services can save money, as many natural assets offer a range of ecosystem services, increase in value rather than depreciate, and are self-replacing rather than needing renewal.
There is significant momentum for using natural assets. Still, if there is an asterisk next to this trend, it concerns integrating them into the financial balance sheet.
At IPWEA, we have an answer by integrating natural assets and green infrastructure into an asset management planning framework.
Digitisation and AI
Moving from natural assets to technology, another major trend is the impact of digitisation, particularly AI.
These technologies have enabled the creation of digital twins, which are now used in many applications to model changes and trial new ideas to projects and infrastructure systems without committing additional funds or disrupting a service or asset.
Digital twins anticipate future changes using data and AI and deliver insights on resource management, maintenance and deployment.
We have a growing number of successful case studies to show the way.
In Queensland, Australia’s most advanced digital twin to date has been created to model the design and planning of the Cross River Rail project in Brisbane.
In New Zealand, the labyrinth of underground pipes and cables beneath the national capital of Wellington will soon exist in digital form as decades of legacy paper records are transferred and aggregated in a digital twin.
In Auckland, a coalition of experts is developing a business case for a digital twin pilot.
The project will cost an estimated NZ$1 million, but its proponents say it will deliver huge value through greater coordination between infrastructure players and can help avoid service duplication.
AI is also fulfilling the missing element of being able to interpret data quickly to allow for decision-making. This will continue to become more sophisticated.
Switching away from technology, a third key emerging theme is the challenge around our industry’s capacity to deliver the projects our communities need.
Resourcing and Building the Capacity to Deliver
Capacity is a critical area of focus for IPWEA, which is why we have invested so much effort and resources in our professional development curricula and short courses in recent years.
It recognises that asset management is becoming increasingly specialised and is an investment in the next generation of industry professionals.
In Australia, for example, the recent 2024 Infrastructure Market Capacity Report from Infrastructure Australia estimated the five-year shortfall at 32,000 full-time workers across the three occupational groupings: engineers, scientists and architects, trades and labour, and project management professionals.
IPWEA is committed to addressing this challenge in collaboration with the government, industry, and education sectors.
Climate Resilient Assets
A fourth trend is in the resilience of assets in the face of a changing climate.
In Australia and New Zealand, recent extreme weather events have demonstrated vulnerabilities in infrastructure assets, raising questions around future planning.
In NZ, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has said that sea levels will rise 5-10% more than the global average forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At NZ SeaRise, Tim Naish – a professor at Victoria University in Wellington – believes NZ sea levels could rise by close to one metre because the land is also sinking as the sea rises.
In Australia, geospatial consultancy NGIS believes the seas will rise by up to 30 centimetres by 2050.
If they rise by 750 centimetres, as could happen by the turn of the next century, popular beaches such as St Kilda and Brighton in Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Perth’s iconic Cottesloe Beach could be at risk.
These forecasts for the future insert some urgency into the infrastructure planning in coastal areas, and mean that hard decisions must be made if our coastal regions are to be resilient in the face of rising seas.
It also requires infrastructure decisions that take a long-term view and reference one of the other emerging trends: the use of natural assets, which can often deliver greater resilience at a lower cost.
Smart Technologies and Technology Integration
The final trend I would pinpoint is the move to smart technologies and technology integration.
Remote sensing, for example, can deliver accurate condition assessment without the need for humans to travel long distances to visit assets on site.
Automation technologies linked to sensors can activate plant and machinery without requiring immediate human supervision.
Smart technologies are extending into areas such as street lighting, where we see the increasing deployment of ‘smart poles’ for urban infrastructure that combine street lighting, traffic lights, closed-circuit television, and public Wi-Fi.
For example, the City of Marion in South Australia uses locally developed software that captures all of the trees on its database and enables them to be managed holistically as individual assets.
Then there is telematics, which uses GPS, sensors, and mobile data transmission to improve the safety and performance of vehicle fleets.
Whole of Systems Approach
What cannot be overstated is that these trends do not stand in isolated silos.
They are available for asset managers to use through a ‘whole-of-systems approach’, which, in combination, can deliver multiple benefits around cost, efficiency, and performance.
If our profession can address the challenge of capacity, the current generation of asset managers will have an exciting suite of technologies and approaches to tackle the big tasks ahead.
The demand for assets and infrastructure is only increasing.
Leveraging these emerging trends will help asset managers meet the challenge of delivering more innovative and resilient solutions for our communities.
