A Holistic Approach To Asset Management in The Netherlands
A Holistic Approach To Asset Management in The Netherlands
A Holistic Approach To Asset Management in The Netherlands
To cite this article: Jenne van der Velde , Leo Klatter & Jaap Bakker (2013) A holistic approach to
asset management in the Netherlands, Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 9:4, 340-348, DOI:
10.1080/15732479.2012.657650
The objective of the national agency for road and water infrastructure in the Netherlands is to deliver best service to
the public at lowest life cycle cost, given public acceptable risk. This requires a sound and well-structured system of
management and maintenance. Such a system consists of elements such as reliable asset data, long-term performance
based maintenance programmes, clear steering objectives and transparent procurement strategies. Asset manage-
ment will make it possible to show what network performance can be achieved, at which costs and with which
associated risks. A model dening an asset owner role, an asset manager role and a service provider role was chosen
as a governing principle for the design of the asset management process. The design of the process described in the
paper sets the boundary conditions to carry out projects with the minimum amount of hindrance for the user while
involving the market in the best possible way.
Keywords: infrastructure management; bridges; life cycle cost; risk management; whole life costing
having suitable models for the asset management He must be able to make strategic choices between the
process for Rijkswaterstaat. networks, for example rail or road and within a broader
The rst is the Institute of Asset Management societal perspective between transportation infrastruc-
(IAM). This is a professional institute based in the ture, education, health care, social services and such.
United Kingdom, dedicated to developing and pro- Further a choice has to be made between long term and
moting best practices for the management of physical short term; what to invest, when and where.
assets. The IAM developed the publicly available
specication PAS 55 for the optimised management
of physical assets (BSI 2008). PAS 55 provides clear Service provider
denitions and a 28-point requirements specication In the Netherlands the role of the service provider is
for establishing and verifying a joined-up, optimised outsourced to private companies. The activities of the
and whole-life management system for all types of service providers are operational maintenance actions,
physical assets. such as the replacement of components. The service
The second is the New Zealand Asset Management provider has to consider how to inuence the
Support (NAMS). NAMS is a non-prot industry performance of the object in terms of reliability,
organisation established to promote asset management availability, maintainability and safety.
through the development of best practice guidelines
and training. The International Infrastructure Manage-
ment Manual promotes a 3-ball role model that Asset manager
involves separation of stakeholder interface from the The role of the asset manager is to provide a link
asset manager and functional service providers between the asset owner and the service provider. In
(NAMS 2006). the Netherlands, Rijkswaterstaat is the asset manager.
One of the strong points of PAS 55 is that it aligns Dierent roles and main activities are described in
very well to a certied quality management system Table 1.
according to ISO 9001 (ISO 2008). Such an approach in
formalising asset management procedures as interacting
processes with the quality management system was The asset management programme
regarded not to be exible enough in this stage, given In 2009, Rijkswaterstaat decided to implement the
the developments described before. Instead, the role asset management. The programme should be com-
model from NAMS was chosen as a governing principle pleted at the end of 2012. In this programme ve sub-
for the design of the asset management process. It programmes are dened:
should be noted that comparable models, for example,
building on strategic, tactical and operational levels of (1) Reliable and accurate asset data
asset management can be found in literature. (2) Stable long-term maintenance programmes
(3) Clear objectives and transparent requirements
(4) Transparent procurement procedures
Asset management roles (5) Life cycle costing
Within the asset management process three roles can
be distinguished: the asset owner, the asset manager
and the service provider (See also Table 1). Reliable and accurate asset data
Asset data management calls for a network oriented
approach. In this approach, a decomposition of all
Asset owner object classes can be handled eectively. The challenge
The Dutch government, in this case the Ministry of for Rijkswaterstaat was to develop a standard decom-
Infrastructure and the Environment, is the asset owner. position of the physical objects. In the past, dedicated
decompositions were used for dierent object classes, This step has been completed in 2009. The next
like bridges and pavements. One part of the solution step was the completion of the data on quality of the
was the introduction of a sector wide normalisation assets, like the condition of the assets, the remaining
process for the decomposition on the levels element lifetime of elements like pavements surfaces, expan-
and component. This project is realised by the NEN sion joints in bridges, tunnel installations etc. The
institute, the Dutch Centre for Standardization. A data necessary for the underpinning of the main-
condition assessment code, originally developed for tenance programmes and the budget claims have
buildings is used as a base for this process (NEN 2010). to be in order by the end of 2011. Besides the
An example of the decomposition for the Rijkswa- data mentioned before, also construction data like
terstaat assets is presented in Table 2. The lower levels, design calculations, drawings and specications are
object and below, are important for the communica- needed. The quality of these data is another eld of
tion between the asset manager and the service concern. Causes for incomplete data are as listed
provider about inspection and specication of main- below:
tenance which is outsourced to private companies. The
upper hierarchical levels in the decomposition, net- . The way design and building contracts were
work down to object, are important for the commu- executed. The focus of these contracts used to be
nication between the asset manager and the asset more on the delivery of the infrastructure in the
owner. past, than on delivery of complete and correct
All business processes have to communicate on all asset data.
these levels. The choice between which process is linked . The long lifetime of structures, implies to keep
to which level is essential. Dilemmas are how to deal data over many decades in order; even while
with organisational boundaries in relation to func- these data are not used frequently. Assets have
tional boundaries. For example, management con- been constructed over multiple decades, and data
tracts for regional divisions have to cope with might not have been recorded at all at the
functional system boundaries, like nodes in the road construction, or badly maintained, or lost over
network. time.
A network wide evaluation of the quality of asset
data in 2008 showed that they were incomplete or The data problem is a concern that many asset
inconsistent. The databases in use were custom managers expressed according to the research of
developed for each object class. One of the problems Wijnia and Herder (2009); The data exist but are
of the existing systems is that each system looks at the not accessible, but in other cases the data simply did
network from its own perspective. This makes it not exist. Much of the data were experience in the
dicult, often impossible to relate information from, minds of the employees and not as a factual
for example, the bridge management system (BMS) recording. Getting the real data out instead of history
and the pavement management system (PMS), not to coloured by rules of thumb was regarded as a big
speak of integrating information. Further additional problem. Getting the asset data at a level sucient to
datasets were developed, mainly as dedicated Excel reach the goals set for the asset management
sheets developed by local groups. This created a programme is a large investment. Ideally, this
patchwork of programmes and systems. The rst step investment should be justied by a sound costbenet
was to make an inventory of: analysis. In practice, we are looking at a rst step to
get on a minimum acceptable level to make the asset
. What kind of assets do we have? management process working, inherent to the process
. How many assets do we have? from implicit to explicit data.
. What is the size of the asset?
they were not integral and not based on strategic goals (1) Network level.
on a network level. (2) Network branch level.
Another point of concern was that the heritage of (3) Object level.
the budget driven organisation Rijkswaterstaat was in
the past. Complete use of the budget seemed more
important than using the budget for the purpose it was Network level: the service level agreement
claimed for. This resulted each year in new budget In a network level a reference level of maintenance is
claims and an unstable long-term maintenance pro- dened, derived from relevant policy papers and
gramme. A lot of energy was used to describe applied to the network. A key element is a risk prole.
bottlenecks that were never funded, instead to describe Such a prole is expressed in terms of Reliability
the activities which were performed and how these Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS). The
contributed in realising the strategic goals. To solve RAMS approach is quite common in mechanical
these issues, an overall design of the maintenance engineering and in rail infrastructure. The European
planning process was introduced. A central database requirements for rail infrastructure, EN 50126 (CEN-
that integrates data of all object classes on a national ELEC 2007), are based on these RAMS requirements.
network scale has been developed in 2004 (Klatter The application to bridge management is described by
2005). The information must be available to the Klatter, Vrouwenvelder and van Noortwijk (2009).
dierent management levels and everyone should be This risk prole can be used for the overall prioritisa-
looking at the same picture; create a single point of the tion in the network, for example between the high
truth. This database has been extended with software capacity roads with high environmental impact and
such as planning tools. One of the new features was an other roads. The agreed level of performance is written
integrated planning of network branches (see next down in a service level agreement (SLA) between the
section) for all object classes. The data of existing tools agency and the ministry. Today this is based on cost
like the BMS and PMS are uploaded in this planning and a reference level of maintenance. In the future this
tool. The tools use the performance of the network and will be based on cost, performance and risk. The SLA
risks (see next section) as the driving forces for is a long-term agreement between parties about the
prioritisation. Such a process of network wide plan- performances which have to be delivered at a
ning has been run on a preliminary basis for the past predetermined level of quality/price mix. The period
two cycles and a nal version will be implemented in of the long-term agreement concerns a period of four
the cycle starting in 2011. The outcome will be a stable years (de Graan and Menkveld 2004). The framework
four years maintenance programme. of a service level agreement should be the link between
the goals of the ministry and the budget of the
products/services to be delivered by the agency.
Clear objectives and transparent requirements
Clear objectives and transparent requirements are
important to justify the maintenance programmes. Network branch level: optimising the network
Each hierarchal level in the decomposition needs a Network branches are parts of the network with a
specic description. Also requirements should be homogeneous performance prole. At this level a
connected throughout the hierarchical levels. Elements balance between the dierent object classes, like
required for these are as follows: structures, pavements intelligent trac systems (ITS),
and such will be dened, based on performance, risk
. At network level a network strategy. prole and costs. This level plays a crucial role in the
. At element and component levels technical translation between the policy objectives on a network
requirements, (design) codes and regulations. level and the practical execution of management and
maintenance at the object level. See also the section
System engineering (SE) principles are used to Final process design.
connect all these requirements and to assure compli-
ance within the dierent levels. SE is a methodology
used in design processes. The leading organisation Object level: maintenance plans
promoting SE INCOSE (INCOSE 2010), denes SE as At object level, for example individual bridges,
an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the maintenance plans have been drawn up. Such plans
realisation of successful systems. SE considers both the contain all maintenance measures for the elements of
business and the technical needs of all customers with the structure. These plans also contain the cost of
the goal of providing a quality product that meets the routine maintenance and the inspection scheme. The
user needs. A three level structure is used: planning cycle is shown in Figure 2.
Structure and Infrastructure Engineering 345
A maintenance plan is drawn up for the rst time in the government agency and the private parties.
the design phase based on standard intervals and cost Various main types of contracts can be distinguished:
indicators for standardised measures. These mainte-
nance measures are based on a maintenance strategy . Performance based contracts: these include all
drawn up for frequently used elements, for example routine maintenance and small-scale repair and
concrete elements, preserved steel, expansion joints replacement. These contracts are steered mainly
and bearings. Such a strategy requires a description of by operational objectives like reliability and
the minimal acceptable quality or condition, or a availability. To ensure safety for direct users
description of acceptable defects. The maintenance and the public is a major concern in these
plans are updated using the results of inspections. contracts too.
Today these inspections are mainly visual inspections . Contracts for larger scale maintenance: preven-
with conclusions based on expert opinion. The update tive maintenance, element replacement, installa-
of the maintenance plans is a manual action integrated tion renewal and object renovation. The base for
in the reporting process of the inspection. The BMS these contracts is the multiyear maintenance
supports this process. Development is ongoing to use programmes, that result from prioritisation.
more objective information from measurements and . Maintenance included in construction projects:
monitoring. In engineering practice the conclusions examples are Design (Built), Finance and Main-
from these other sources are still derived by assess- tain (D(B)FM). This type of contact is used for
ments from experts. The inspection results are used to large new infrastructures or extension projects.
determine the maintenance need. Also the present risk The nance component is used in the larger
prole is determined. This is described in terms of projects (over 200 million Euros). The inclusion
RAMS aspects and used in the network planning of maintenance for 1030 years is expected to
process described in previous paragraphs. Mainte- give an incentive to optimise the maintenance
nance measures are clustered and optimised on a early in design and construction phases. A better
network level and tuned with the pavement main- performance at lower maintenance cost is
tenance. After execution of maintenance the next cycle expected.
starts.
The general policy is to scale up contracts; larger
areas, include larger scale maintenance in performance
Transparent procurement procedures contracts and longer contract periods. These develop-
The policy in the Netherlands is to outsource activities ments bring a number of risks that have to be
to private parties to an extent as high as possible. All mitigated. Looking at this at a network level this
maintenance and construction works are contracted may result in a patchwork of contract parties, each
out to private companies, contractors and engineering contract party is acting on parts of the network. The
rms. This means that 100% of the nal output and risk of conicts of interest at boundaries is real. A
outcome is realised through these contracts. This asks dicult point is the exibility through the years needed
for a well balanced mix of responsibilities and skills of to cope with uctuating budgets. To make sure that
346 J. van der Velde et al.
this will work, procurement touches each of the three management process, when existing infrastructure falls
elds discussed above: short in complying with demands. For new infrastruc-
ture Rijkwaterstaat uses the so-called MIRT (Dutch
(1) Reliable asset data are needed for a contractor acronym) procedure. The process is divided into a
to prepare a realistic bid. Appraisal of risks number of clearly distinct phases (Bakker et al. 2010):
transferred to the contractor and the price the
owner is willing to pay for this. On the other . Intake: in this phase the functional demand is
side, the asset data that are gained during explored and elaborated.
contract execution are needed for the agency; . Exploration: in this phase possible solutions will
both for its own management tasks and for re- be developed to full the functional need. A
contracting to a new party, after the previous costbenet analysis is used to develop a
contract period. preferred solution among three alternatives.
(2) To dene the maintenance need and to These are fed into the decision process.
prioritise this need to an executive programme . Plan development: the preferred solution is
introduces a possible conict of interest be- elaborated along with some alternatives.
tween the agency and the contractor. Already . Procurement planning: the procurement strategy
mentioned is the possible inexibility of long is developed and contracts are designed.
year contracts. As policies and budgets shift . Execution: construction of the new infra-
over time a xed contract scope may not be the structure.
desired situation. Extending the scope without . Operational phase.
competition can be expensive, while diminish-
ing the scope can result in costly penalties. This LCC is being implemented as integral part of the
makes the programming process more compli- MIRT process. In the early phase of the process,
cated. Who will make what choices? exploration, a LCC calculation will be made for the
(3) Requirements and objectives have to be trans- solutions developed. In addition to the results of the
lated to contract specications. The documents costbenet analysis the cost of construction, the LCC
drawn up for use within the agency are often prognosis (discounted present value) and the cost of
not specic enough to serve as contract future maintenance are determined. These three costs
specications. General accepted codes and are updated through the following stages in the
regulations often lack specic points needed process. In this stage of the project simple standardised
for the high level performance requirements of cost indicators are used. This ensures that future costs
the national infrastructure. Some of this is in the operational phase are fully taken into account in
specied in internal additional specications decisions on construction and funds are made available
and can be rewritten into contract specica- for exploitation and maintenance.
tions. But many are implicit experience in the Additional procedures have been developed for the
heads of professionals. SE is expected to be of phase of procurement planning. In the choice of the
help in theses specication problems. Last but contract LCC considerations are taken into account.
not the least, the new role model between the The incentives the contractor will have based on the
agency and the market parties asks for a change contract type are balanced against the interests at stake
in attitude. The agency no longer sets detailed for the agency, to take as much advantage as possible
specications based on an elaborated design, for future asset management. A dedicated tool has
but sets functional requirements instead. The been developed to include LCC aspects in the criteria
market party is now responsible for the design for selection of the most advantageous bid. The LCC
and the assurance that the solutions built meet prognoses for the known solutions are used in this
the requirements. The new contract forms tool. The lowest cost for construction is no longer the
imply an innovation in relations, roles and predominant selection criterion. LCC are taken into
responsibilities. consideration as well (Bakker and Volwerk 2007).
Evaluation of recent projects showed that a cost
reduction up to 10% on life cycle cost will be achieved
Life Cycle Costing by applying this procedure in the bid selection.
Previous sections dealt with asset management in the
operational phase, once the infrastructure has been
constructed. This section describes the asset manage- Final process design
ment aspects of new construction. The functional need In the previous sections a number of ingredients are
for new infrastructure originates from the asset described. A good asset management practice calls for
Structure and Infrastructure Engineering 347
The asset management programme will be completed BSI, British Standards Institution, 2008. Public Available
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