Utilities are a large part of our society, especially when it comes to running a business effectively. As the tech industry grows ever larger, things like electricity and power are becoming more essential to our daily lives. As the demand rises, so does the need to manage it properly.
In order to provide utilities for customers, you need an efficient asset management strategy. Assets can include things such as cables, pipes, buildings, and much more. All these things must be managed well; otherwise, you risk jeopardizing the distribution process. It helps to have an asset management software like BlueTally, which can organize your assets for you.
What is Asset Management in Utilities?
Utility companies use asset management to organize their assets and investments, such as pipes, power stations, electrical cables, and much more. They want to make sure their equipment is working well and doesn’t need repairing to ensure supplies like electricity and gas are being delivered to customers. They also keep track of any payments made towards maintenance, upgrades, and repairs.
Asset management includes checking equipment age, conditions, and performance. The cost of running these assets are monitored and made cost-effective to avoid any shortages in funds.
Why is Asset Management Important?
Asset management is used in utilities for several reasons. It’s important to make sure the company has enough funds to manage and prolong their assets and continue delivering utility supplies. The main goal is to reduce business costs while maintaining high-quality service.
Money
Asset management is essential for keeping track of money and spending. If equipment ever fails or requires repairs on short notice, the company must make sure that maintenance can be paid for. They risk failing to meet customer demand otherwise.
Maintenance
Asset management makes it easy for utility companies to know when assets require fixing or replacing. You can monitor the condition of assets and organize them by performance quality.
Asset Life
You can manage assets by age as well as condition. Asset management allows you to look at equipment life cycles and see if an investment was worth it. If the asset life is short, but the price you’re paying is high, it’s likely this will lead to losses in the future. This can help you develop strategies to make your company more cost-efficient.
Sustainability
The goal of every utility company should be to keep equipment sustainable. This reduces company costs and ensures that demands are always met. Asset management includes making risk assessments, which can help determine the best ways to prolong asset life.
Efficiency
Ordering assets makes them easy to track. If you need to find information, it’ll be easy to locate. Asset management involves adding details like age and condition for different assets. So if you need to quickly find an asset’s age, you can do a simple search and easily locate those details. This improves work efficiency.
How to Manage Assets For Utilities
Asset management for utilities includes a lot of steps, so it can be hard to find the right starting point. There’s no set methodology you must follow, but there are ways to make asset management much easier. Asset management oversees many things, such as maintenance and funding, so it’s important to make the process as efficient as possible.
Step 1: Find an Asset Management Software
Before you start forming asset management strategies or plans, it’s best to find an ITAM (IT asset management) software first to help you get started. There’s free asset management software available, such as BlueTally. It offers various admin features, which help you sort and organize your assets efficiently.
There are asset assignments, changelogs, depreciation reports, and other systems that help streamline the management process. It’s important to manage your assets using a clean interface in order to quickly organize and locate information, especially when deadlines are short.
Step 2: Create an Asset Management Team
Asset management software can do many things for you automatically, such as calculating asset depreciation and creating barcodes, but human input is still required for the most part.
Once you’ve decided on a management software, create a team to take on the task of managing assets. The team must be functional and adept at working with other departments. Asset management influences many departments, including maintenance, finance, field service, and IT. Asset management teams should maintain a good level of communication with these relevant parties.
Step 3: Make an Asset Inventory
After establishing an asset management team, begin making an inventory for your assets using the ITAM software. Add all your assets to a list and include necessary details for each of them. This refers to factors such as:
- Age
- Duty rate
- Environmental risks
- History of faults
- Maintenance costs
- Failure estimations
Double check all the information to ensure it’s accurate.
How to Estimate Failure
Determining the likelihood of failure can be a confusing task, but there are methods you can use to increase the accuracy of your predictions.
For estimations and risks, you can use systems like LiDAR to assist you in retrieving useful data. It’s important that these estimates are as informed as possible to avoid errors in judgment. If you were to overlook a risk factor, an asset’s condition could suddenly worsen without any back-up measures in place.
When calculating the possibility of failure, take into account the history of damage, age, rate of use, and direct environment. Environmental factors can include things like vegetation, weather, and surrounding infrastructure. Look at how those factors could negatively impact an asset’s performance, and use damage history to determine the common causes of failure and the likelihood of them occurring again.
Step 4: Identify Maintenance Needs & Costs
After creating an inventory for your assets, identify which ones require maintenance. Assess the condition and performance quality of each asset and label them according to how critical their condition is. For example, if a piece of equipment is severely damaged or has very poor performance, label it as critical.
Make a set of criteria to judge the assets on, and base it on your company objectives. Based on the current state of an asset, think about the risks of failure and the consequences it will bring.
Ask yourself some questions to help you judge the condition of an asset:
- How much damage is there and how does it affect performance?
- Does the asset perform well enough to meet consumer demands?
- How long will the asset last if left without maintenance?
Categorize the assets according to their status while giving priority to the ones in critical condition. This system allows you to easily see which assets are in dire need of repairs or replacements.
Determine what type of maintenance each asset requires and estimate the cost of repairs. For example, some assets may need replacing instead of repairing, so don’t sink money into assets that will never get better.
Step 5: Create an Asset Management Strategy
The final and most essential part of this process is creating an asset management strategy. It’s all well and good to organize data and information, but it amounts to little if you can’t use that data to take action. The whole point of asset management is to ensure that equipment is maintained and working well at an affordable cost.
There are a few steps involved in creating an efficient asset management strategy:
- Identify your asset management objectives and goals
Identify what your main objectives are for this asset management strategy. Try linking them to your company goals. For example, if your company wants to save some money, make one of your objectives to reduce maintenance costs. - Evaluate your current asset management methods
Look at your current asset management methods, and evaluate the benefits and drawbacks. Determine what needs improving and why current methods aren’t working. This will help to inform you on how to create a better asset management strategy. For example, if the current management system makes it hard to find information on assets, change the organization method or software. - Illustrate targets and actions you can take to meet your objectives
Determine what actions you can take to achieve your set objectives. Lay out your goals and set some specific targets for each one. These targets should help you reach your goals. For example, if the goal is to increase asset life, the targets will be to reassess environmental risks, remove obstructive vegetation, and increase maintenance checks. - Test your strategy
You should test your new asset management strategy by carrying out some tasks. Decide on a trial period, such as 3 months, and reassess the strategy after the trial is over. Look at the successes and failures, and compare it to the old strategy. Ask yourself if the new strategy is an improvement or hindrance, and make changes if necessary.
Conclusion
Asset management for utilities is an essential part of ensuring consumer demands are met; you must monitor equipment conditions, maintenance requirements, and available funds. Asset management makes sure that assets are repaired on time to satisfy customers. It’s also a tool for saving money and prolonging asset life.
Most companies use asset management software to help them organize assets. Here at BlueTally, we aim to streamline your asset management with a clean and easy-to-use interface. We provide specialized tools to aid you in your management, such as checkout systems and depreciation reports. Get BlueTally for free today, or check out our demo to see how we can streamline your asset management processes.
