By Aymone Agossou
Local governments face numerous competing priorities when it comes to their infrastructure assets. Residents rely on services from infrastructure like community buildings, parks, roads and sidewalks; at the same time, they expect those services to be high-quality and delivered in a cost-effective way. Meanwhile, municipalities must also contend with the rising threat of climate change by taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to make their assets—and communities—more able to withstand its effects.
To meet these demands and effectively deliver services to their communities, municipalities are evolving their asset management practices to prioritize the better use of data, improved asset inventories and an increased focus on equity, long-term value and climate resilience. According to data from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Municipal Asset Management Program (MAMP), well over a thousand municipalities have reported advancements to their asset management competencies over the past eight years. And it’s clear that there’s demand among them to make even more strides toward managing their assets in the best way possible.
Advancing asset management skills
In recent years, Canadian municipalities have grown to recognize the importance of sound, data-driven asset management, and they’re working hard to overcome the challenges that have kept them from investing in it, such as insufficient funding and staff and a lack of general know-how. Making asset management a priority can help municipalities maintain momentum and boost organizational knowledge while evolving their business practices and meeting ever-increasing concerns about climate change.
Local governments are increasingly valuing data-driven decision-making due to its significant role in optimizing spending. For instance, the City of New Westminster, B.C., developed a comprehensive Sanitary and Drainage Asset Management Plan complete with asset overview, inventory, level of service, lifecycle strategies, continuous improvements and risks—including climate change impacts. This plan gives the City’s government the necessary data to make informed decisions regarding infrastructure maintenance, investment prioritization and resilience planning.
To achieve this kind of plan, it’s key that staff have expertise in asset management—and that decision-makers are keenly aware of its importance. One factor helping municipalities with these goals was MAMP, which ran from 2017 to 2024 and provided funding, resources and training, and fostered collaboration. With workshops, webinars and technical assistance, MAMP engaged municipal staff and raised awareness of the importance of asset management. Through MAMP, 1,647 municipalities engaged in asset management training, 1,346 received funding, and more than 2,000 reported improved levels of understanding, skills, knowledge and competencies.
Collaboration within and across communities is a valuable part of this work, too, and has increased in recent years. MAMP played a key role in creating networks and developing a culture of knowledge sharing by gathering asset management professionals from across the country to share and exchange ideas, as well as by developing partnerships with provincial organizations to leverage local expertise.
“The value of cohort-based learning cannot be understated,” says Christina Hopkins, Asset Management Consultant at Urban Systems. “Learning environments like these support people in applying what they have learned through other training opportunities, to implement learnings in their context. Cohorts also build a network of support for participants outside of their municipality.”
Municipal staff are sharing more information within their organizations too, by providing regular updates to council on their progress on asset management. Through all of these initiatives, staff are boosting their understanding of asset management practices and even becoming certified asset management professionals, increasing their knowledge and skills to better serve their communities.
Understanding climate risks and boosting equity
In addition to prioritizing the growth of asset management skills and practices, the sector is also evolving to include climate change as a key consideration. This means not just being aware of the projected life span of assets, but also understanding how the effects of climate change—think extreme weather events like flooding, heat waves and ice storms—will affect an asset’s ability to function and cope. While these events aren’t new to Canadian municipalities, they’re increasing in severity and frequency, meaning asset planning from decades ago is likely insufficient.
In New Brunswick, for instance, the Community of Three Rivers and the Town of Salisbury have updated their asset management plans to include climate considerations in the risk assessment process. Salisbury’s climate risk assessment has helped them identify which assets are most vulnerable to climate hazards, which will enable them to prioritize assets for necessary adaptation measures. And staff in Three Rivers assessed vulnerabilities for critical assets like roads, sewers and facilities and created a report with suggestions on how the community can adapt, with costing for short-term recommendations. This report has made it easier for decision-makers to understand risks and make choices to help ensure assets remain functional and resilient to potential challenges.
Canadian municipalities are strongly aware of the importance of prioritizing climate resilience. In fact, through MAMP, 90 per cent have expressed interest in including climate concerns into their infrastructure planning. This proactive approach highlights the essential role of asset management in quantifying climate vulnerabilities and seamlessly integrating them into risk assessment and decision-making.
Equity is another factor that local governments are progressively building into their infrastructure planning and development. A data-driven approach to asset management can help municipalities evaluate asset conditions across neighbourhoods and allocate resources more equitably, ensuring equivalent quality of infrastructure. Equity across an asset’s life span is increasingly being considered by municipalities as well. By projecting whole lifecycle costs into long-term financial planning, decision-makers can ensure future generations won’t have to carry the burden of increased costs.
Moving into the future
Implementing asset management is a long journey. Asset management can be complex, and it requires significant time and effort as well as collaboration across all departments. Staffing is a key factor as well: turnover and lack of technical expertise can stall progress, as can lack of buy-in from staff who may be resistant to change. Plus, inconsistent or inadequate data may limit the ability to make evidence-based decisions. In short, it can be challenging for municipalities to maintain momentum and motivation on asset management programs.
The solution is resources, both internal and external. Internally, coordination and cooperation are essential, which is why many local governments have working groups or committees that meet regularly to discuss and align asset management practices across the municipality, not just at the department level. These groups can help municipalities improve and coordinate practices such as maintenance planning, risk assessment and prioritization, performance monitoring, lifecycle costing and investment planning. By addressing these areas collectively, municipalities can ensure a cohesive and strategic approach to managing their infrastructure assets.
External resources such as funding and training are essential in helping municipalities reach their asset management goals and an opportunity that simply didn’t exist eight to 10 years ago. In the past eight years, for instance, MAMP awarded $70 million in grant funding to 1,346 municipalities of all sizes—the smallest has just 20 residents—for the express purpose of improving their asset management processes and skills. More than 800 of these received not just a grant, but technical assistance as well.
To help meet the growing demand for asset management support, new funding opportunities are on the table too, such as the Green Municipal Fund’s newly announced Local Leadership for Climate Adaptation (LLCA) initiative, which aims to help communities adapt and build long-term infrastructure resiliency to the impacts of climate change. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, every dollar invested in adapting to climate change can save as much as $15 in economy-wide future costs. By 2031, this $530 million initiative will have funded more than 1,400 municipal activities.
In order for future generations to enjoy the same level of service as current residents, municipalities must develop a long-term financial plan that prioritizes equity and climate resilience in infrastructure decisions. That’s one reason that municipal staff are making the case for asset management to councils so they can create asset management plans and policies that outline a community’s goals, objectives and strategies to manage its infrastructure effectively. Programs that support local governments on this endeavour by offering funding as well as coaching and technical assistance and online resources, tools and guides can help inform their asset management processes and development.
Municipalities have significantly evolved their asset management practices in recent years. Previously, they often relied on reactive measures and lacked dedicated resources for comprehensive planning. Today, supported by programs like MAMP and LLCA, they’re embracing proactive strategies: creating or updating detailed asset inventories, conducting condition assessments to inform maintenance and investment decisions and adopting technology-driven approaches for data management and analysis. This evolution reflects a shift towards more structured and sustainable asset management practices that prioritize climate resilience and equity, ensuring long-term efficiency and community well-being.
Aymone Agossou is a project director for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Municipal Asset Management Program and Climate-Ready Plans and Processes.
[This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of ReNew Canada.]
Featured image: Over the past eight years Canadian municipalities of all sizes have worked hard to overcome infrastructure challenges and evolve their asset management practices. (FCM)
