Describe your journey to AMCL.
David Ford, a UK AM pioneer who inspired BSI PAS: 55, came up to me at a conference on decision making and asset information in 1998 and told me straight out: “You need to be an Asset Manager”. I got to know AMCL in its early days through the Institute of Asset Management, before I went to work as GM of Strategic Asset Management at RailCorp in Sydney.
When I returned to the UK for family reasons in 2010, I started working with AMCL as a trainer around the world. In 2012 I taught our first course in the USA, to MTA in NY, and I never looked back.
What are you currently working on?
I am passionate about AMCL’s collaboration with the power utility network CEATI, developing new courses for them and building on my own work in the past decade with US and Canadian power companies. And checking off my bucket list to work with Tennessee Valley Authority! I have also been working with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and others involved with the UK Treasury Infrastructure and Projects Authority, on ensuring projects build assets fit for the future.
I have probably taught more people on Asset Management – many thousands across five continents – than anyone. Those people are the legacy I am most proud of.
I am a board member of the not for profit forum Talking Infrastructure, set up by Asset Management’s founder Dr. Penny Burns to work for future friendly infrastructure. And co-wrote Building an Asset Management Team with Lou Cripps, Director of Asset Management at RTD Denver, in 2019.
How has Asset Management developed over the years?
In some ways, we are still tackling the same challenges: longer term integrated planning, based on lifecycle modelling, and getting capital projects to consider what happens after the end of the project. But when I started to call myself an asset manager, few people had any idea what that involved. There was no professional training outside Australia, no competency framework or subject specific guidance. No ISO 55000!
And AMCL was 20 people only 15 years ago. Demand for excellent AM across the globe means there are now 200 of us in eight hubs. I couldn’t imagine that when I started.
Asset Management 40 Years on...
Talking Infrastructure, in association with AMCL, is holding an event in Sydney on Wednesday April 24th, 2024 with local and regional Asset Managers, IPWEA, AM Council, and Accountants to call for urgent changes in all of our mindsets and tools when it comes to managing our infrastructure.