Decision making methods to prioritise asset-management plans for municipal infrastructure

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring and comparing the benefits associated with a change in the decision making method for infrastructure asset management. Three common methods of measuring are reactive approach (also known as worst-first), silos and trade-off optimisation. A case study is used to illustrate the impact of applying different decision making approaches. The case is based on the urban municipality of the Town of Kindersley, Canada, and contains pavements and water main, storm sewer and sanitary sewer pipes. Economic comparisons of (a) the observed levels of service under fixed budgets and (b) the expenditure required to achieve the target levels of service are presented to support the selection of the preferred decision making method and to measure the superiority of one approach over another. Results from the analysis confirmed the expected inferiority of the worst-first method. Applying the trade-off method resulted in the expenditure of 8.83% fewer resources than the use of the silo method. For a yearly budget of C$800 000 (US$590 695) applied to all types of infrastructure, the trade-off resulted in mean condition levels 12.9% higher than those resulting from the silo method. The proposed platform can be applied to other infrastructure using different performance indicators.