ASSET MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE SERVICE DELIVERY: “Deep knowledge is rapidly being lost. Organizational amnesia is the consequence, and this creates risks and liabilities for communities,” wrote Kim Stephens in the Winter 2025 issue of Asset Management BC Newsletter
NOTE TO READER:
The feature article in the Winter 2025 issue of the Asset Management BC Newsletter is an essay written by Kim Stephens. It draws on lessons learned in a sweeping narrative titled the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in Metro Vancouver from 1994 through 2024.
Nine cascading factors must be in alignment to implement a course correction. Will 2025 be the year of the re-set?
“For over two years, I have been writing a sweeping narrative titled the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in Metro Vancouver from 1994 through 2024. What did you learn along the way, current local government staff would ask me; and where did that lead each time, they would add,” wrote Kim Stephens, Executive Director, Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia.
“Their questions prompted me to dig deeper and deeper. So, I expanded my ‘story behind the story’ interviews to delve into motivating factors. Through the power of storytelling, my hope and belief is that a new generation of decision makers would grasp the intergenerational baton and then build on deep knowledge that comes from lived experience.”
Who will step up?
“In a perfect world, governments would maintain and manage engineered and natural assets as…interconnected components within a system that includes the people who live there! But systems thinking is an aspiration; it is not current reality.”
“Given what is at stake in the world of local government infrastructure, however, the moment is right to proactively brand 2025 as YEAR OF THE RE-SET. The Partnership defines re-set in terms of implementing a course correction.”
For change to happen…
“While writing the Green Infrastructure Chronicle, I realized that I must find a way to distil and communicate three decades of history into an easy-to-tell story of how the Metro Vancouver region arrived where it is today. So, I boiled 700 pages down to a table. Four distinct eras define the past three decades, with the period of time for each varying between 6 and 9 years. My lived experience is that nine cascading factors must be in alignment to implement a course correction:
All it takes is one factor to be out of alignment and that can be enough to derail a process and progress. Yet it may be years before that consequence becomes apparent.
TO LEARN MORE:
To read the complete article, download a copy of “Nine cascading factors must be in alignment to implement a course correction. Will 2025 be the year of the re-set?” as published in the Winter 2025 issue of the Asset Management BC Newsletter.
