The Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base contains a lot of information about Asset Management, and a range of other Local Government related topics. All of the information on the site is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence, which means it can be freely re-used and adapted.
Below is a brief overview of a few recent news items and site content that might be of interest to any of your staff involved in Asset Management.
Web-based Asset Management Plans
Do your Asset Management Plans sit on a shelf gathering dust? If they do, perhaps a Web-based Asset Management Plan might be the answer. Bundaberg Regional Council has been developing its asset management plans online in a wiki based format. The approach allows multiple people to edit parts of the plans simultaneously and ensures that the most up-to-date version of the plan is instantly available to everyone. It is easy to get public and agency input about the plans as they are being developed, and best of all it makes searching for information in the plan much easier. This approach could just as easily be used for other types of plans. To have a look at a sample plan click on any of the images below.
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Technological Change Forecasts
A Technological Change Forecast is the component of an Asset Management Plan that looks at how technological changes may effect a Council's assets. It is not easy to predict how various technologies will effect local government, but we are going to give it a go. Click here for a list of technological advances that may effect local government.
Asset Types
Nearly every Council has its own theory on how to group assets and exactly what to call them. The site has an extensive list of asset & component types that can be used as a check list if you are planning to review your asset hierarchy.
Database Structure
Ever wished that your asset database was better structured? It is still early stages, but we have started working on an idealised generic open asset database structure. Hopefully when it is fleshed out a bit it could become a standard asset data exchange format, that will make it easier for Councils to compare data, and swap systems.
Recent News
The Queensland Government & LGAQ have just announced that they were successful in obtaining $2.7 million in funding from the Federal Government's Local Government Reform Fund to support Queensland Council's developing Core Asset Management Plans for key infrastructure assets.
About the Site
The site more than anything is about collaboration. As of January 31, 346 local government employees and other professionals from across Australia & New Zealand had become members of the site or contributed content to it.
If you would like to know more about the site, there is a detailed site summary here.