The Government's Perspective
The biggest asset owner in any country is always the government. When a country needs to grow, the main emphasis would be to have the best and a complete infrastructure. Each year, the government will create and dispose of assets. Most of the time, the creation of an asset is always justifiable but sometimes, it is not.
The Malaysian Government spends nearly RM 20 billion a year just to operate and maintain the asset. That figure does not include expenditure by local councils and other statutory bodies. If we take into account the private sector expenditure, the amount could be well over RM 100 billion a year.
In Malaysia, asset management is in an implementation stage but in other parts of the world especially Australia, Great Britain, United States of America, asset management has been in practice and numerous manuals and guidelines in asset management are available to the public.
Asset management is important to the government as 98% of government assets are infrastructural assets, which include roads, public utilities, and government buildings. These assets are for the proper delivery of government’s policies and services. If we do not manage the assets properly, whatever government services provided will be affected or in jeopardy. The service delivery will not reach the desired level as promised to the public. The public expects the government to deliver or provide a service and the government must ensure that the delivery of the service level.
For your information, the service level varies from one asset to the other based on the criteria set for that asset. For instance, safety for the road users must be the most important criteria for all roads but the service level of a road (this service level is not the same as the level of service in the geometric design of a road) would be different for each category of road for example a secondary, tertiary, or a primary road. There is also a possibility of roads having the same service level whether the road is located in the countryside or in a town area if safety the only criteria. However, bear in mind, a road in the countryside does not need to have street lightings, sidewalks or even landscape when compared to a road in a town area.
Service level sometimes construed as the functionality of the road based on its geometric design and pavement design. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the service level we need to provide on a road must based on certain criteria whether it is functionality (which include safety, accessibility and mobility), condition, utilization or intervention period, is the most important factor and this is what the public needed and to be informed.
With the same principle, service level must be determined for all assets, be it park and recreation facilities, buildings, water supplies, waste and sanitary facilities and so forth.
This is the fundamental of asset management.
The Public’s Perspective
When the public facilities lack some of its basic functions or it frequently breakdown, the public would express their feelings towards that public facilities or would oppose the creation of that facilities.
We must ponder on these frequent questions about the public; that is:
a. Why should the public have all these opinions?
b. Why should the public show their dissatisfactions?
It is all because the public are contributing for services provided by the government, for example transportation system, parks and recreation facilities and so forth.
It is also because the public want a good quality of life for the contribution they have made. They want a sustainable environment even though developments are in progress. They want a better environment. They want value for money from our assets. Without all these, human would not have a desired level of liveability.
These assets provide essential services for providing people with the acceptable quality of life. If the assets failed in providing out the service, then, they do not have want they want, that is an acceptable quality of life.
Therefore, it is imperative that the government need to adopt a good asset management system in order to ensure all our valuable assets will continue to provide reliable public services.
The coming post.
Next, I will briefly explain the fundamentals of asset management.
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The biggest asset owner in any country is always the government. When a country needs to grow, the main emphasis would be to have the best and a complete infrastructure. Each year, the government will create and dispose of assets. Most of the time, the creation of an asset is always justifiable but sometimes, it is not.
The Malaysian Government spends nearly RM 20 billion a year just to operate and maintain the asset. That figure does not include expenditure by local councils and other statutory bodies. If we take into account the private sector expenditure, the amount could be well over RM 100 billion a year.
In Malaysia, asset management is in an implementation stage but in other parts of the world especially Australia, Great Britain, United States of America, asset management has been in practice and numerous manuals and guidelines in asset management are available to the public.
Asset management is important to the government as 98% of government assets are infrastructural assets, which include roads, public utilities, and government buildings. These assets are for the proper delivery of government’s policies and services. If we do not manage the assets properly, whatever government services provided will be affected or in jeopardy. The service delivery will not reach the desired level as promised to the public. The public expects the government to deliver or provide a service and the government must ensure that the delivery of the service level.
For your information, the service level varies from one asset to the other based on the criteria set for that asset. For instance, safety for the road users must be the most important criteria for all roads but the service level of a road (this service level is not the same as the level of service in the geometric design of a road) would be different for each category of road for example a secondary, tertiary, or a primary road. There is also a possibility of roads having the same service level whether the road is located in the countryside or in a town area if safety the only criteria. However, bear in mind, a road in the countryside does not need to have street lightings, sidewalks or even landscape when compared to a road in a town area.
Service level sometimes construed as the functionality of the road based on its geometric design and pavement design. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the service level we need to provide on a road must based on certain criteria whether it is functionality (which include safety, accessibility and mobility), condition, utilization or intervention period, is the most important factor and this is what the public needed and to be informed.
With the same principle, service level must be determined for all assets, be it park and recreation facilities, buildings, water supplies, waste and sanitary facilities and so forth.
This is the fundamental of asset management.
The Public’s Perspective
When the public facilities lack some of its basic functions or it frequently breakdown, the public would express their feelings towards that public facilities or would oppose the creation of that facilities.
We must ponder on these frequent questions about the public; that is:
a. Why should the public have all these opinions?
b. Why should the public show their dissatisfactions?
It is all because the public are contributing for services provided by the government, for example transportation system, parks and recreation facilities and so forth.
It is also because the public want a good quality of life for the contribution they have made. They want a sustainable environment even though developments are in progress. They want a better environment. They want value for money from our assets. Without all these, human would not have a desired level of liveability.
These assets provide essential services for providing people with the acceptable quality of life. If the assets failed in providing out the service, then, they do not have want they want, that is an acceptable quality of life.
Therefore, it is imperative that the government need to adopt a good asset management system in order to ensure all our valuable assets will continue to provide reliable public services.
The coming post.
Next, I will briefly explain the fundamentals of asset management.
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