Asset Management

July 1, 2019

• Strategic Asset Management Policy
  • Requires municipalities to outline commitments to best practices and continuous improvement

July 1, 2022

• Asset Management Plan: Phase 1 For core assets
  • Inventory of assets
  • Current levels of service measured by standard metrics
  • Costs to maintain levels of service

 July 1, 2024

• Asset Management Plan: Phase 2 Include all assets
  • Inventory of assets
  • Current levels of service measured by standard metrics
  • Costs to maintain levels of service

July 1, 2025

• Asset Management Plan: Phase 3
  • Builds on Phase 1 and 2 by adding:
    • Proposed levels of service
    • Lifecycle management and Financial strategy

Purpose of an Asset Management Plan

Asset management is the art and science of balancing the relationship between money, risk, and performance in businesses that depend on physical assets for their success. It is a proactive, lifecycle approach to reducing build, operation, and maintenance costs and risks. This is achieved by:

• Maintaining and/or replacing capital assets using models of the best economy;
• Taking a system-level, whole-life, whole-cost perspective, rather than a part-specific perspective;
• Managing risks rather than specific resources;
• Providing clarity and evidence in decision-making, thus ensuring that stakeholders understand the choices made.

Asset Management Planning although legislated by the Province, will provide several benefits to Municipal operations, including:

• Better decision-making regarding resource allocation;
• Leads to more effective communications with ratepayers, elected officials, financial rating organizations, and regulatory agencies;
• Provides consistent Levels of Service to the public;
• Better management of risk to the municipality;
• Allows for more effective financial planning;
• Reduces lifecycle costs;
• Leads to more efficient data management;
• Facilitates the establishment and subsequent implementation of policy objectives and the related measurement of performance;
• Avoids problems and potential crises;
• Results in positive institutional change.

The concept of asset management at the Municipality of Markstay-Warren (“Municipality”) has expanded and progressed over the Municipality’s history. The Municipality’s first asset management plan was adopted in 2014. Although not leveraged since 2014, the Municipality shall endeavor to leverage this critical foundational document to improve municipal operations by utilizing its asset management best practices and processes, and through this process develop a multi-year, multi-step program.

Annually, the actual results of infrastructure decisions made throughout the year will be measured and evaluated against the plan. The results will be reported to Council and form the basis for revisions and updates to the plan going forward. The Plan is a general guide only and must be receptive to shifting priorities, trends and contingencies.

The Municipal 2022 Asset Management Plan is available for review.

The Municipal  2014 Asset Management Plan is also available.

The Province of Ontario established a Municipal Modernization Program for funding to undertake expenditure reviews with the goal of finding service delivery efficiencies and lowering costs in the longer term.

The objective of our project was to conduct a service delivery review of our public communication, Public Works, and Fire Department Services, along with administration and shared services with the goal of increasing capacity and efficiency through modernization.

Through our application in November 2019, our municipality received $50,880.00.

In 2020, the process was completed with a Service Delivery Review Report submitted to Council in September 2020.

Infrastructure Asset Inventory

Municipalities are required to provide summary-level information on each asset category, if applicable, including:

• asset types (for example, urban arterial road, rural arterial road, watermains) and quantity/extent (for example, length in kilometers for linear assets)
• replacement cost valuation (replacement cost valuation is forward-looking and accounts for expected inflation, changes in technology, and other factors)
• the average age of the assets in the category
• asset condition, including a description of the municipality’s approach to assessing the condition of assets in the category (for example, this could include categorizing the proportion of assets in “good,” “fair” and “poor” condition)

The municipality must indicate how the background information and reports used to inform the summary-level information for each asset category will be made available to the public.

Levels of service

The levels of service component of an asset management plan describes what people experience from the municipality’s infrastructure. For example, bridges without load restrictions can offer a relatively higher level of service compared to bridges that do not allow heavy freight vehicles.

The regulation requires municipalities to determine the levels of service that their infrastructure assets provide using metrics. These metrics will help municipalities determine, for each asset category, the current levels of service provided by their infrastructure assets and allow them to establish proposed levels of service they want to achieve over time.

Current Service Levels

When determining the current levels of service, it is important to use data from, at most, the two calendar years prior to the year in which the current levels of service are established.

Proposed Service Levels

When establishing the proposed levels of service for each of the next 10 years, the municipality must explain why the proposed levels of service are appropriate. See the section entitled ‘Timing of Regulation’ for additional information regarding the phasing for this requirement.

Metrics

Metrics are provided in the regulation for core infrastructure assets. The metrics are focused on the scope and reliability of the service and address community levels of service (a qualitative description or image of the services experienced by the people using the asset) and technical level metrics (a quantitative figure that describes the level of service provided by the asset, for example, the percentage of bridges in the municipality with loading or dimensional restrictions). Municipalities are required to establish their own metrics for non-core assets.

Lifecycle Management and Financial Strategy

By July 1, 2024, the regulation requires municipalities to determine the lifecycle activities that would need to be undertaken for each asset category over a 10-year period to provide the proposed levels of service.

Lifecycle Activities

The regulation requires municipalities to identify lifecycle activities based on the options they have considered.

Good asset management planning requires a complete understanding of the range of choices available to municipalities. The analysis must consider: the entire lifecycle and associated costs related to the assets; risks; and financial viability of the options considered.

Financial Considerations

The financial component of the strategy must include the estimated costs of the identified lifecycle activities to achieve the proposed levels of service, as well as the funding available, for each year of the full 10-year period.