ASSET MANAGEMENT IS A CONTINUUM OF STEPS (GRAPHIC): Communication tool conceptualizes milestones along the way as a local government progresses on its journey to achieve fully integrated Sustainable Service Delivery for the drainage function
Note to Reader:
Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework recognizes that asset management for sustainable service delivery occurs alongside associated evolution in community thinking. Incremental in nature, it is a continuous quality-improvement process.
The asset management journey for a local government is a “continuum of steps” as illustrated below. Step One is to embrace the BC Framework. Step Two is to implement Sustainable Service Delivery. Step Three is to apply EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process.
There is typically no funding mechanism for stream maintenance and management (M&M) such as for water and sanitary sewer utilities. So, the unfunded liability caused by drainage impacts grows over time. Once the life-cycle approach is standard practice for constructed assets, getting to Step Three would be so much easier.
How to incorporate “Watershed Systems Thinking” into Infrastructure Asset Management
Years in the making, the vision for Sustainable Service Delivery became a reality with rollout of the outcome-oriented “BC Framework” in 2015. Because it is a driver for tackling the “unfunded infrastructure liability”, the BC Framework has garnered both national and international attention.
The BC Framework is a game-changer because it is strategically aligned with asset management requirements under senior government funding programs, in particular the Gas Tax Program. The BC Framework also points the way to integration of natural systems thinking and climate change thinking into asset management.
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Asset Management & Ecosystem Services
“The ultimate vision for fully integrated Sustainability Service Delivery is that communities would protect, preserve, restore and manage natural assets in the same way that they manage their engineered assets,” states Glen Brown, General Manager (Victoria Operations), Union of BC Municipalities.
“A watershed, and the ecosystem services that it provides, is a fundamental and integral part of a community’s infrastructure. This is not to suggest that all ecosystem services provide a municipal function. But trees, soil, green spaces and water do contribute a valuable municipal function in maintaining the hydrologic integrity of a healthy watershed system.”
The Asset Management Journey
“Implementation of asset management along with the associated evolution of local government thinking is a continuous process, not a discrete task. We needed a way to illustrate this diagrammatically, and thus communicate, what the journey by a local government to the eventual Sustainable Service Delivery destination would look like.”
“This led us to the concept of a continuum. The relevance of this way of thinking is that different local governments will always be at different points along the asset management continuum. This is why we focus on outcomes and do not prescribe what to do in BC.”
“The continuum (as shown on the image above) bridges two pieces. One piece is recognition that the asset management process is founded on an incremental approach. The other piece is integration of natural capital, natural assets and watershed systems thinking.”
Moving Towards “Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management”
“The BC Framework allows for tailoring of an approach to individual needs and capacities of individual local governments. Within BC, some local governments are well advanced. Some are just starting out. Over time, and through a continuous quality improvement process, the capacity and expertise for Sustainable Service Delivery will inevitably increase within every local government.
“The branding logo for the BC Framework also represents a continuum. As local governments mature, both in terms of understanding and applying asset management principles, there is then the ability to appropriately incorporate and integrate natural capital into their asset and watershed plans. By also accounting for and integrating the services that nature provides, over time they can achieve the goal of sustainable service delivery for watershed systems,” concludes Glen Brown.
EAP is a BC Strategy for Community Investment in Stream Systems
The Synthesis Report is a distillation of over 1000 pages of case study documentation into a storyline that is conversational and written for a continuum of audiences that includes land use practitioners, asset managers, stream stewards, and local government decision-makers.
To Learn More:
Download and read a copy of the entire Synthesis Report on EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, A B.C. Strategy for Community Investment in Stream Systems (2022), the 4th in the Beyond the Guidebook series of guidance documents.
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