By David Jenkins and Steve Mooney
One of our missions at IPWEA has been to bring a greater financial sustainability perspective to asset management. This has required collaboration between people with accounting backgrounds and our members, who are engineers.
Applying a financial lens to asset management and informing accountants about asset managers’ work is the path to creating the best results for our communities.
Through this synthesis, public funds deliver value for money and assets, which are appropriately designed, maintained, and replaced to deliver public utility.
In recent times, the asset management world has begun to explore the idea of green infrastructure and natural assets, where features such as creeks, mangrove swamps, and woodlands can be incorporated into an integrated asset management plan with traditional built infrastructure.
In this context, I recently spoke at a conference organised by TREENET, an organisation dedicated to improving Australia’s urban forests.
There were some interesting conversations from the outset. I realised that there is more that can be done with urban foresters and arborists understanding the language of engineers and engineers appreciating the value these professions can bring to green and natural assets.
Many of the ideas and projects fostered by TREENET resonate strongly with the work of IPWEA members.
A research project is underway on engineered spaces for trees in urban paved areas. This project recognises that trees are an essential part of Australian cities, which will be home to 90% of Australia’s projected 35 million population by 2050.
TREENET argues that while applications of engineered surface and subsurface tree spaces have occurred in Australian cities over the last twenty years, their use has been limited, rarely monitored, and often seen as high cost and high risk.
They also share their frustration, pointing out that the same stakeholders who see urban forestry as high risk in practice talk in theory about how green infrastructure delivers a wide range of benefits, such as community health and well-being, stormwater management, and improved air quality.
And there is that often ultimate metric: trees and urban canopies improve property values.
When it comes to asset management, all professions want the same result for their communities. Yet, they don’t necessarily share a common language.
Urban arborists in local government have an inherent knowledge of the value of the natural assets they work with daily, but they are seldom involved in the planning or budgeting process.
Understandably, many are frustrated that they don’t have a greater voice.
The push for sustainability and the momentum for integrating natural assets into our infrastructure plans will require greater collaboration between the professions and the breaking down of long-established professional silos.
A world where urban arborists talk to engineers who speak to accountants would deliver better outcomes. It is about sharing and understanding a common vernacular.
That is easy to say, and there are challenges, but I suggest it’s time to engage in dialogue and deepen our collaboration to advance the wider cause of better asset management.
