The Significance of Assets Condition Monitoring in the Development of Engineering Asset Management

Abstract

From its inception, about two decades ago, the basic concept of asset management required government agencies and local government authorities to capitalize and depreciate infrastructure assets according to their residual value, rather than expense them against earnings. Asset management thus embraced the approach of accounting for the condition of physical assets, including concepts such as asset renewal and rehabilitation. Asset management was thus formulated as a systematic, structured process covering the whole life of an asset, from initial design and construction through to application, maintenance, and eventual renewal or disposal. The need therefore arose for a holistic view of the impact of assets condition on the effectiveness of an asset's whole-of-life return on investment. Such a holistic view required integration of condition monitoring techniques and condition monitoring standards with various maintenance regimes. Factors such as appropriate condition monitoring, effective preventive maintenance and a responsive logistic supply system could help keep assets degradation to a minimum; however, it is the asset's inherent maintainability that determines this minimum. Testability, an important subset of maintainability, is a design characteristic that allows the condition status of a physical asset to be determined, and faults to be isolated in a timely and efficient manner. Attention must therefore be paid to ensuring that all asset designs incorporate features that allow for non-destructive testing, and trade-offs must be made on the use of built-in-tests (BIT) versus other means of assets fault detection. However, asset flaws and defects and the need to identify them will never disappear, and continual development of fault detection and characterisation techniques is necessary. There is thus an urgent need for new and applicable approaches to extend the scope of condition monitoring research to meet requirements of Engineering Asset Management. The Cooperative Research Centre for Integrated Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM), an Australian Federal Government funded research organization, incorporates research programs that specifically study the needs of managing engineering assets in both the public and private sectors. This paper presents discussion on the significance of condition monitoring in the development of know-how to manage such assets.