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Asset Management BC

    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “I would like to say taxpayers are unhappy but that would be an understatement. They are angry! Everywhere there is distrust,” stated Arnold Schwabe, Executive Director with Asset Management BC


    “Things are changing in local government and we need to get a better handle on what direction that change goes. And I believe that distrust results from failure to communicate the purposes of local government as defined in the Community Charter for municipalities and in the Local Government Act for regional districts. When elected officials get so far into the weeds that they tell staff how to do their job, that creates problems. So, what do we do? We reset. It is clearly a time of change. This isn’t about blame. It is about putting pieces together,” stated Arnold Schwabe.

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    TODAY’S DECISIONS – TOMORROW’S FUTURE: “During times of crisis, a few leaders always step into the spotlight with a new vision bridging conflicting worldviews. Michael Blackstock is one of these visionaries,” stated Glen Brown, Chair of Asset Management BC, when he announced the keynote speaker for the AMBC annual conference in November 2024


    “During times of crisis, a few leaders always step into the spotlight with a new vision bridging conflicting worldviews. Michael Blackstock is one of these visionaries,” stated Glen Brown. “As an Independent Indigenous Scholar and founder of the Blue Ecology™ theory, Michael Blackstock offers a unique First Nations perspective on the climate crisis, inserting water into the difficult debates about carbon emissions. His ability to mediate grew out of a uniquely diverse background as a writer, a thought leader, and Forester. He has written over two dozen peer reviewed papers.”

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Avoid the Pain, Be Deliberate, Fund the Plan: Waiting for municipal infrastructure to fail means that you are forced into one path. And this is probably the most expensive path. Do not wait until things go wrong,” stated Dan Horan, Director of Engineering & Public Works, District of Oak Bay


    “One of the biggest challenges is to create awareness and understanding of why communities need to take sustainable service delivery seriously. A key message is that the level of service to the community can be so much better when asset management is done properly. Another key message is that you do not have to tackle every challenge at once. Dealing with life-cycle realities is such a challenging area of engineering and utility asset management to think about. Many other fields of engineering have already been through multiple life cycles of the asset. They have already felt the pain of not doing it right,” stated Dan Horan.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Different local governments will always be at different points and different levels of maturity along the asset management continuum. This is why we focus on outcomes and do not prescribe what to do in BC,” stated Glen Brown, Asset Management BC Chair, in 2015 when he unveiled the branding image that conceptualizes what the journey by a local government would look like to achieve Sustainable Service Delivery for Watershed Systems


    “We framed the Asset Management Continuum as a series of three steps, recognizing that most local governments were at Ground Zero in 2015. Our operative phrase was ‘as understanding grows’. We saw this as the key consideration for local governments progressing along the continuum. Although it might be possible, we believed it unrealistic to expect anyone to jump directly to Step Three and integrate natural systems into their asset management strategies. We needed a way to illustrate this diagrammatically. This led us to the concept of a continuum,” stated Glen Brown.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Dealing with life-cycle realities is such a challenging area of engineering and utility asset management to think about. Many other fields of engineering have already been through multiple life cycles of the asset. They have already felt the pain of not doing it right,” stated Daniel Horan, Director of Engineering and Public Works, when he explained Oak Bay’s Sustainable Infrastructure Replacement Plan (January 2022)


    “Oak Bay is now coming to grips with how to deal with three parallel streams of effort all at once. There is the current maintenance load that must be done. There is also the maintenance backlog that must be cleared. On top of maintenance, we are also expanding the total amount of capital infrastructure work that we are doing,” stated Daniel Horan. “Infrastructure replacement is as big challenge for the next 50 years, as it was 100 years ago when community infrastructure systems were first being installed. But this challenge is not on everyone’s radar. Yet it is fundamental to what it means to live in a community now.”

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Our key message is: Get it right at the front-end for long-term sustainability. All those involved in land development have a role to play in achieving Sustainable Service Delivery,” stated Judy Walker, Village of Cumberland, when she provided context for the Comox Valley regional response to the infrastructure funding gap at the 2011 State of Vancouver Island Economic Summit


    The initial capital cost of municipal infrastructure is about 20% of the life-cycle cost; the other 80% largely represents a future unfunded liability. “The change in approach starts with land use planning and determining what infrastructure and services can be provided sustainably, both fiscally and ecologically. Sustainable Service Delivery means integrate land use planning and infrastructure asset management. Our goal in sharing Comox Valley experience was that other local governments would be inspired to apply what they have learned from us to their own situations,’ stated Judy Walker.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Everyone in a local government organization needs to recognize that asset management is a process, not a plan,” stated Wally Wells, Asset Management BC Executive Director, when explaining application of BC’s Framework for Sustainable Service Delivery (May 2021)


    “The important and telling part of the title is Asset Management is a process to provide a sound basis for decisions relating to the function – which is service delivery! Assets exist and are created, upgraded, replaced, maintained, and operated to provide a service. There is no other reason for their existence than provision of the intended service. So, when considering a project related to an asset, we should be considering the service the asset is to provide. An Australian associate once said: ‘an asset without a user has no value’,” stated Wally Wells.

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    THE FUTURE IS HERE, NOW: ‘Elders in Action’ trigger rethink of sewage treatment strategy for the replacement Lions Gate facility serving Metro Vancouver’s North Shore sub-region (Asset Management BC Newsletter, Fall 2019)


    The decision to build a treatment plant has life-cycle implications that are multi-generational in terms of environmental outcomes – for example, the existing Lions Gate facility has been in service for 58 years. Drawing on their unique combination of expertise, these elders focussed political attention on the need to be visionary and dare to be bold in going beyond what is currently minimum standard of practice. “By making presentations to community groups and business leaders, we have experienced how public and political sentiments can be shifted,” stated Glen Parker.

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