Project
Lekwa Asset Care Asset Care Project:
Phase1
The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) introduced the Asset Care Programme in order to support municipalities to progressively improve their asset and organisational practices through improving the condition and performance of electricity, water, and sanitation assets.
Poor maintenance practices and lack on investment in the renewal of assets, lack of refurbishment of assets as well as lack of investment in new capital projects, resulted in the Lekwa Local Municipality experiencing service delivery challenges in terms of water and sanitation, and electricity, this is resulting in poor asset performance and reliability. Ultimately, this led to extended periods of equipment downtime resulting from unplanned outages.
The DBSA has partnered with the Lekwa municipality to assist with the assessment, development, and implementation of the Asset Care Project for water and sanitation, and electricity. The implementation of the asset care project was intended to assist the municipality improve infrastructure asset performance and reliability, reduce outages to acceptable levels, reduce water and electricity losses, improve the electricity quality of supply and protection, minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) and thereby ensure sustainable services
Overall Approach
The approach incorporates support activities that were necessary to ensure sustainability of the intervention, communicate progress to all affected stakeholders, and ensure related project risks are managed proactively. These included:
- Risk Management
- Quality Management
- Change Management, Stakeholder and Communications Management
- Skills and Capability Transfer
Maturity assessments were undertaken across the various dimensions as per the GFMAM and ISO 55000 standard, an illustrative outcome of the maturity assessment in depicted below:
Asset Management Policy
The Asset Management Policy was revised and updated to be a standalone document which co-exists with other organisational policies, covering the scope of the asset management system, and supersedes all other AM policies. This is illustrated below:
The asset management policy was developed to inform the alignment of Asset Management activities with business activities. Moreover, the policy would set a foundation for the development of the Strategic Asset Management Plan, and the subsequent Execution Plans for water, sanitation and electricity assets, including all other assets in different asset classes within the Municipality.
Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP)
Lekwa Local Municipality has a responsibility to effectively and efficiently provide services to the community, through its assets. This Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP) was developed to articulate the Asset Management System and the various components of the asset management framework. The Asset Management System illustrates the key components of the municipality’s asset management system and how they relate. The Asset Management Framework essentially reflects the scope of the asset management system, developed for the Local Government Sector.
The capability of Lekwa Municipality to deliver on the goals and objectives of the asset management strategy and the municipality’s vision is determined by the processes, across the various functional disciplines within the Municipality, together with the core engineering value chain and the supporting financial management processes. These are also enabled by the supporting ICT systems and staff deployed across several disciplines, that are deployed in part or entirely, to deliver successful asset management function at the municipality.
The SAMP was developed to outline the link between Property, Plant and Equipment (including infrastructure assets), the associated funding and business enablers (people, process and technology) through the above-mentioned asset management system and framework. This Strategic Asset Management Plan also links with the Asset Management Plans developed for each asset class which enables the municipality to deliver on its asset management goals as well as the overall goals and objectives of the municipality, viz. service delivery objectives.
Asset management is a core function of the Municipality as it is central to the provision of municipal services. The diagram below illustrates some of the key elements required to align asset management strategy, objectives, plans, and activities, with the municipality’s strategic objectives as well as the overall vision of the municipality.
The asset management policy guides the development of a SAMP. In turn, the asset management objectives required for enabling the achievement of municipal strategic objectives are derived from the SAMP. The outcome of the asset management planning is the Asset Management Plan (AMPs) aimed at translating defined asset management objectives into strategic initiatives that will be executed over an identified period. These (AMPs) plans are usually implemented to impact upon the productive life of an asset throughout the asset life cycle.
Within the municipality, a well-defined asset management system will provide alignment between the IDP and the various functional disciplines, thus ensuring all activities are focussed on achieving specific outcomes throughout the Lekwa’s core business value chain. Alignment includes various Departments within the Municipality, as well as the activities undertaken by the support functions. The ultimate aim is the achievement of the municipal objectives through the attainment or realisation of the asset management objectives.
Asset Management (Execution) Plans
Asset Management Plans (AMPs) or Execution Plans provide for related planning decisions for the Municipality’s assets. Given the AM strategy (SAMP) and objectives, the Municipality needs to determine what it needs to do and when to do it in order to optimise the performance and utilisation assets as to reach the AM objectives and targets. Planning needs to include consideration for solutions that do not require additional assets in order to achieve the service delivery objectives.
The majority of asset management activities are managed at an operational level; therefore, AMPs will not be developed on a Municipal level, but on the basis of a class of assets or services, i.e., Electricity, Water and Sanitation as indicated in the diagram below. The SAMP develops the initial AMPs by utilising and leveraging existing information from the IDP, procedures and processes, Operational Plans, Functional Policies, etc. Ultimately, each discipline will develop, optimise and prioritise their plans in conjunction with other functions, taking into account the overall benefits, resource requirements, interdependencies, risks and performance impact.
AMP’s are documented in one or many documents separate from the IDP. The alignment of the SAMP and AMPs is depicted below.
The AMPs were developed inline with the appropriate time horizons to meet the needs of the Municipality and take account of the period of responsibility and the life of different assets. The complexity of the AMPs was be determined by the size of the Municipality’s asset portfolio and the degree of sophistication in its asset management approach.
Asset Care Phase-1 Project Outcomes
PWD developed customised asset management deliverables that are geared towards supporting the roll-out and implementation of sound asset management system and practices for Lekwa Local Municipality, incorporating:
- Asset Management Maturity Assessments (with baseline scores)
- Change Readiness Assessments
- ICT & GIS Requirements
- Asset Register assessments with asset condition assessments and proposed renewal projects for Electricity, Water & Sanitation assets
- Updated Asset Management policy
- Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP) – Asset Management Strategy
- Execution Plans for Water, Sanitation, Electricity and the Organisation(Technical Department)
- A final Consolidate Asset Management Report
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