How poor maintenance and renewal threatens municipal service delivery

Dec 17, 2013

It is essential that both public and private sectors get a strong understanding of their asset management maturity and develop a robust maintenance road map, says Anton Booyzen, chairman of the Southern African Asset Management Association (SAAMA).

Municipalities in South Africa are responsible for managing and caring for infrastructure with a combined value of R1.156 trillion. According to a report by the Financial and Fiscal Commission, R80-billion would be needed over the next 11 years to address the current maintenance backlog in municipal electricity, water and sanitation infrastructure and to return it to optimum condition. The minimum required spend in current facilities is R12-billion over the next two years.

Alarming increase in costs

SAAMA's Anton Booyzen explains that "depending on a company's asset management maturity, its cost to deliver a product or service can be up to 25% higher than it should be every year. What makes this all the more alarming is that these extreme costs for large scale industry, utilities and municipalities have escalated dramatically when compared to only five years ago without a commensurate increase in service or product delivery and stands to worsen still unless these business’s act swiftly."

"What's more", says Booyzen, "with the impending ISO 55000 accreditation set to replace the outgoing PAS55 in 2014, it is essential both public and private sectors get a strong understanding of their asset management maturity and develop a robust road map to deliver a joined-up, risk-based, whole life cycle asset management."

Benefits of optimised asset management

Improved planning and consistent, prioritised and auditable risk management are just a handful of the benefits of optimised asset management that will be available at SAAMA's inaugural Asset Management Conference, hosted at African Utility Week & Clean Power Africa, taking place from 13-14 May 2014 at the CTICC in Cape Town. Attended by more than 5000 power and water professionals from more than 30 African countries and 70 worldwide, it is the largest utility gathering of its kind on the continent.

Russell Hughes, African Utility Week event director, says the team is very excited about the co-location of the events: "We have had a close affiliation with large scale industry as well as utilities and municipalities for a number of years and continue to develop this by supporting their need for renewable energy alternatives and energy efficiency solutions in the face of rising energy costs which is now stretching operational profitability to the limit. With the imminent new ISO 55000 standard it was the next logical step on our journey with the energy intensive user and municipal community to deepen our support and offering at African Utility Week."

He continues: "The beauty of this co-location is that 300 new and in the main technically focussed SAAMA Conference delegates will be granted free access to the exhibition. The makeup of these delegates will predominantly be Maintenance Engineers, Technical Managers and Asset Planning Managers all of whom have an inherit need to trial the latest technologies and solutions on offer given their hands-on day to day work."

Shared challenges shared

The SAAMA and African Utility Week conference breakout sessions for coffee, lunch and refreshments will be hosted on the floor of Africa’s largest power & water exhibition, where SAAMA have a dedicated pavilion for Asset Management service providers including the likes of Pragma and Aurecon. Says event director Russell Hughes: "The African Utility Week welcome reception and main networking function will cater for both sets of conference delegates meaning that shared challenges, knowledge and interaction leading to lucrative new business partnership will be possible. This new co-location and our own dedicated Large Power Users conference stream and the co-location of Clean Power Africa ensure solutions will be found for the power and water industry's challenges."

The SAAMA Conference will take the place of Pragma's Physical Asset Management Thought Leadership conference.

Event dates and location:
Conference and Exhibition: 13-14 May 2014
Focus day: 12 May 2014
Site visits: 15 May 2014
Location: CTICC, Cape Town, South Africa

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