2009 – Managing dam portfolio risk using a model for World Class Asset Management

Angus Swindon, Tony Ang

Managing risk lies at the heart of the asset management processes. All utilities and large asset owners strive to ensure their asset management practices meet the needs of the business. To be able to demonstrate this to internal and external stakeholders including Boards, Regulators and Insurers, some form of bench marking or comparison with industry practice is often undertaken. This inevitably leads to a discussion about what good or indeed best practice might look like and a somewhat philosophical discussion about what aspects of these might be appropriate. If an organisation chooses to define “World Class Asset Management” as “the level of practice that no one else could exceed given the same internal requirements and constraints and external operating environment” then that organisation must develop a framework such that a pathway to achieve this can be defined and an assessment made. This paper will present such a framework and describe a pathway to demonstrate progress towards asset management maturity. Actively managing surveillance practices to monitor dam condition and performance is presented as an example within such a framework.

Keywords: World Class Asset Management, Dam Safety, Surveillance, ANCOLD Guideline.