The must have content for your strategic asset management plan (SAMP)

Cover your butt by including the must-haves in your strategic asset management plan (SAMP)

Bigger than Ben Hur or short and sweet? What should you include in a comprehensive plan for managing your organisation’s assets or a SAMP for short?

While every organisation is different, and as such, every SAMP will be different, this is our recommended content list for a quality strategic asset management plan.

Where to start?
While an executive summary may be required, the two critical parts of a good SAMP will start with the following:

Purpose and objectives: details on the purpose of the plan, the scope of assets covered, the timelines for forecasting future needs, any key business decisions, programs, budgets and projects that the plan will be used for and the decisions that the plan will be used for.

Service delivery drivers: a summary of the business needs that drive asset requirements and any insights into how these are changing, including changes to services, new technologies, market forces or regulatory impacts. If non-asset-based options have been considered, then this should also be included.

The Meat of the Plan
Too often the SAMP has too much data. Summarise the key data and if you feel you must, include the rest in appendices. Remember the plan is no good if it’s too big for stakeholders to get their head around. Here’s what should be included:

Asset summary: a summary of all assets included in the plan by asset class, geography or however else you have decided to classify your assets. Information on, as a minimum, the number, locations and costs for each.

Cost summary: a summary of the estimated lifecycle cost of assets. Schedules can be included for the detailed analysis. Depending on the organisation this may be an annual process or, many require a longer-term assessment of asset costs. With some asset classes there will be accounting standards on how operational and capital costs are treated for internal reporting and tax purposes.

Asset lifecycle management: details of how the entire lifecycle of assets from acquisition to disposal, including procurement, commissioning, maintenance, upgrades and disposal. Linkages to other internal functions including procurement and operations should also be included.

Supporting plans
There is a bunch of supporting plans that can be included. Here is our nomination for the cast of ‘best supporting plans’:

Risk management plan: a plan that identifies and shows how potential risks associated with the organisation’s key assets are managed. This should include details of how risk assessments are conducted, any risk reporting and, contingency plans for key risks associated with mission critical assets.

Maintenance management plan: details of how ongoing preventive and corrective maintenance is managed, how maintenance is tracked for key assets and how feedback on maintenance is cycled into asset upgrade and replace programs.

Compliance management plan: details on how compliance is managed for any internal, regulatory and statutory compliance obligations associated with asset management including health and safety, workplace safety and environmental.

Utilisation and disposal plan: a plan for measuring asset utilisation and for disposing of assets that have reached the end of their useful life. This should include decommissioning, disposal and how any environmental impact is minimised.

Measurement and reporting plan: details of the systems or processes used to track and reporting on asset performance and utilisation and, details on how this data is used to optimise asset utilisation and inform future purchasing decisions. The plan for review and update of the plan should also be included.

Remember to cover your butt! Doesn’t matter how hard you try, there will always be things that you couldn’t foresee, so always include a list of the assumptions you’ve used to develop the plan and the limitations on the available data.

Assumptions and limitations: the report should clarify the extent of assumptions that have been used to inform the plan and, the incomplete or missing data that was not available. This ensures that readers will be clear on what was used and where the data gaps may need to be addressed for future planning/ reporting purposes.

By using this as the basis for your SAMP, you will be able to add and adjust the content to meet the specifics of your organisation. For more information contact us at hello@grosvenor.com.au