COLLABORATIVE ASSET
MANAGEMENT APPROACHES,
FINDINGS & ISSUES Alan Phelps
Alan Phelps is a Strategic Asset Management Consultant with NPS Property Consultants Ltd. He has a PhD in Asset Management from the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham and has undertaken a range of consultancy assignments in the public sector both in the UK and internationally.
to date. It is not intended as a comprehensive review of collaborative asset management but rather a discussion paper to raise awareness of some of the key elements that underpin collaborative asset management drawing on the authors own practical consultancy experiences.
The Policy & Resource Context
Public service delivery is undergoing a period of radical change and within this local government is re-inventing itself with processes of democracy, accountability and service delivery changing. There are two related main drivers of this change – one a policy direction being set by the ‘Big Society’; the other a resource pressure with an imperative to close the UK’s fiscal gap, In addition there are changes in socio-demography affecting patterns of service demand as well as people’s rising expectations of public services. Central to the transformation is the need to promote communities as vibrant and self sustaining places. Physical infrastructure is an important part of this community cohesion and the property assets which the public sector owns and uses must make a contribution to creating better places in which to live and work. This presents public sector bodies with the challenge of critically examining their assets to ensure that they are optimised in terms of organisational aspirations, resource efficiency and their contribution to supporting local communities.
Duncan Blackie
Duncan Blackie is an Asset Management Practitioner who works directly with local public bodies and through organisations such as Local Partnerships and Improvement East. He is Eastern Branch Secretary, a Chartered Surveyor, MBA and PG Cert in Coaching.
In essence the Big Society is a drive to increase individual and community self-reliance encouraging local people to become more active in determining priorities for their area; in shaping local public service delivery and in some cases assuming responsibility for local services. Getting people at a local level to take more responsibility and to do more to help themselves and their neighbours is seen as an alternative to action taken by state institutions and public services. As a consequence the state across all its levels and forms would be expected to be smaller. A smaller state is also consistent with the financial pressures facing the economy and the need to reduce the nation’s debt burden. With constraints in public sector expenditure all public bodies will need to do more for less and differently; consider radical methods of delivering their services or in some cases cease the provision of services altogether.
Introduction
The nature of public services is changing. This change is being driven by a range of factors and these in combination point to a radical transformation of public services and thus a need for a re-evaluation of the volumes, type and nature of property assets which underpin public service delivery. Whilst the timing, pace and extent of change are hard to predict some discernable trends can be identified. Asset management as the emerging professional discipline which takes a strategic view of publicly owned property assets needs to understand and respond to these changes. Those responsible for the provision and management
of property assets will be
increasingly expected to provide innovative solutions to this reform agenda. One distinct emerging trend is the propensity towards collaborative asset management – that is the development of a coordinated approach to the management and use of property assets in a geographical area irrespective of organisational boundaries and individual asset ownership by separate organisations. This article looks at experiences of collaborative asset management and draws out some of the key approaches, findings and issues from work undertaken
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In response to this operating environment there has been an increasing focus on asset management. The emphasis has been on releasing latent value tied-up in ‘bricks & mortar’; reducing the costs of owning and occupying property; challenging the need for, and performance of property; reducing liabilities associated with maintenance backlogs and the carbon footprint of buildings.
In addition asset
management is seen as pivotal in place shaping making communities as vibrant places in which to live; work and play through supporting regeneration.
The asset management
response to resource pressures has also been supported by policy direction from central government which is pointing towards joining-up public service delivery and localism. Part of this policy emphasis is seen in the Department of Communities and Local Government Total Capital and Asset Programme which is supporting multi-agency working in asset management.
THE TERRIER - Autumn 2011
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