THE STATE OF ASSET MANAGEMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS

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1 THE STATE OF ASSET MANAGEMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS Y.C. Wijnia a, P.M. Herder a,c a Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Jaffalaan 5, 2628BS Delft, The Netherlands b D-Cision bv, PO box 44, 8000 AA Zwolle, The Netherlands c Next Generation Infrastructure Foundation, Delft, The Netherlands The world of infrastructures for energy, transportation, water and communication is constantly changing. It is not only that the use is ever increasing, recent years have demonstrated that there is a move from the public domain to a more privatised setting. On the one side, customers become more critical and demand better quality and better service, whereas on the other side a need arises to limit the (public) costs of infrastructures. To cope with those conflicting demands many infrastructure organisations have introduced Asset Management, an integrated approach to balance costs, performance and risks. However, in discussions at the Asset Management Platform (a group of over 30 asset managers from all infrastructures in the Netherlands, established in 2007 by the Next Generation Infrastructures foundation) it appeared that many infrastructure asset managers had great difficulty in getting beyond the first promising step. As a first step in the formulation of a new research programme an interview round was conducted with a number of infrastructure asset managers to get a better feel for what the precise barriers and challenges were. In this paper the results of the interviews are presented. Key findings were that Asset management acquired a strong foothold, but that it was a bottom up process which did not reach the strategic level. There were still difficulties in convincing top management of the strategic value of asset management and in aligning organisational goals with technical and operational standards. Furthermore, it was recognized widely that asset management required a change in maintenance paradigms and that asset management should focus on life cycle costing. Nevertheless, asset management was generally considered to be an engineering discipline, even though lots of efforts were spent on creating support for the initiative. Some asset managers explicitly recognized the social and cultural issues and acted on this by training their asset managers in social skills like empathy and persuasiveness, however this was not common. Neither was the extensive use of asset performance models for decision support, as most asset managers preferred to rely on historical data. However, at the same moment, many asset managers reported problems in accessing those very historical data. Based on these results, a research programme was defined in which academics as well as practitioners will participate. The outlines of this programme will be introduced in the paper. Key Words: infrastructures, asset management practice, asset governance, research agenda 1 INTRODUCTION Infrastructures have always been a vital part of society. In the past, most cities developed at a crossroad of different modes of transportation, as this was a great opportunity for trade. The first infrastructure planners were the Romans, with their extensive road network and water distribution system. Over the years, the concept of infrastructure has expanded from road and water to incorporate gas (1812), rail (1829), telecommunication (1843), electricity (1879) and airlines (1914) 1. It appears society has become more and more dependent on the delivery of goods and services from/to far away, and thus on the infrastructure that supports delivery. The use of energy in our personal lives is ever increasing, and people got used to the idea that someone at the other end of the world is not far away. 1 Years according to wikipedia

2 Most infrastructures have seen a continuous development of technology since their establishment. The 8 lane highways cannot be compared to the single track carriage ways of the Romans and the internet is miles away from the first telegraph. However, in the institutional setting development seems less dramatic. Virtually all infrastructures started as a private, commercial enterprise. As government recognized the importance of well functioning infrastructures for society, many of those infrastructures were put under government control, either by institutionalizing them (the infrastructure provider becomes a government agency), acquiring the shares of the private companies or by strict regulation. Recent years have demonstrated a reversal of this movement, as many sectors have been liberalized and deregulated and many infrastructures are (re)privatized. This happened in the Netherlands for instance with respect to rail (1993), electricity (1999), and gas (1998). The general idea behind all those initiatives is that markets would provide better services at lower costs than governmental bodies could. Coinciding with this focus on commercial quality, customers became aware of the non-commercial qualities of the infrastructure. It has become more difficult and more expensive to plan new infrastructures (at least, the visible ones) as people claim a right to the view they always had, and that the landscape should not be disturbed by the new infrastructure. Incidents that happen (for example substantial power outages) are treated as news items, and the availability of information on those incidents is immense2. Infrastructures might therefore appear more risky, and new regulations are put in place to safeguard the public against the perceived greediness of the commercial infrastructure operators3. Infrastructures are under pressure, as one could say. This is shown in the figure below. Increasing Performace requirements Limited Budget Infrastructure system Less Public Acceptance Higher Legal Rquirements Figure 1: The pressures on infrastructure systems It is up to the infrastructure operators to resolve this issue. In this light, it is no surprise that Asset Management has gained the attention of many infrastructure operators. Asset management, after all, is the profession of balancing cost, performance and risk over the lifecycle of an asset. For example, the PAS55 process standard defines asset management as: Systematic and coordinated activities and practices through which an organization optimally manages its physical assets, and their associated performances, risks and expenditures over their lifecycle for the purpose of achieving its organisational strategic plan. However, when getting into the details of the infrastructure system, it becomes clear that the total operation of an infrastructure not only depends on the physical assets, but also on other elements, like information systems, data, standards and procedures, employees, capabilities and culture 4. These elements are only to a certain extent independent of each other. Over time the elements might influence each other. It is therefore probably better to speak of elements that are loosely coupled, instead of independent. This is shown in the diagram below, where the black box infrastructure system of figure 1 is replaced in which the constituting elements are represented as masses, connected by springs. The metaphor of a mass-spring system is explicitly chosen, as it provokes the images of objects reverberating and exerting forces on other elements. The metaphor also 2 Supported by the telecommunications infrastructure. In the recent Schiphol plane crash (25th feb 2009, am) reports were on the internet at no later than am (twitter) 3 In this debate, people seem to miss that the people working in those operators are to a large extent the same as when it was a state owned enterprise, preserving the culture and values of the old days 4 This is recognized by PAS55, but not in the definition 2

3 demonstrates another characteristic many asset managers are familiar with: you can increase the strain on the system to achieve a higher (financial) performance, but it either will come back at you in future (for example, postponing maintenance and having to replace the asset in a few years because of irrepairable damage) or have a (delayed) impact on the performance. Short term financial gains can be achieved, but it is much more difficult to sustain them. Increasing Performace requirements Bioware Personnel Capability Culture Software Limited Budget Standards Procedures Practices Less Public Acceptance Hardware Assets Systems Data Higher Legal Rquirements Figure 2: The mass-spring metaphor of Asset management In the Netherlands, many infrastructure managers have embraced asset management. As the Netherlands are a small country, most asset managers regularly bump into each other, and several initiatives to share knowledge on the profession were deployed. In those initial contacts it became clear that knowledge sharing alone was not good enough, some new knowledge had to be developed as well. None of the participants was really certain where the next steps of asset management could lead them. The Next Generation Infrastructure Foundation (NGInfra) took up the challenge of knowledge development and established the Asset management platform in spring In the startup meeting of this platform, a very high representation of corporate (high level) infrastructure managers was present, as over 90% of the invited people attended. Represented infrastructures included road, rail, electricity, gas, water, sewage, telecom, and airports. However, in the first meeting it became apparent that asset management had very different connotations in the diverse infrastructures. As this was a serious barrier for developing a shared research agenda, the first step of the platform was to establish the state of Asset Management in the Netherlands. In this paper, the questions, procedures and key findings of this research are presented. Based on those results, a research agenda and programme was formulated and kicked off. The outlines of this programme will be introduced in the paper. 2 THE SETUP OF THE RESEARCH The research aimed at arriving at a representative list of issues in asset management that would cross-cut all infrastructure sectors. Therefore asset managers in 7 different infrastructure and related sectors were interviewed. These were: 1. Gas and oil 2. Electricity 3. Rail and road 4. Drinking water 5. Waterways and water protection 6. Telecom 7. Asset Service providers The focus of NGInfra lies with the long lived infrastructures of sectors 1 to 5. To establish whether the technology was a determining factor, the 6 th sector was added. In telecom, technology and demand is developing much faster than in the others, 3

4 resulting in short lived assets. As outsourcing of services is a hot topic in the field of asset management, the 7 th sector was added, to provide insight in the specific issues related to outsourcing from both sides. The core objective of the research was establishing the key issues in asset management, for which NGInfra could develop knowledge development and dissemmination programs. To achieve this, 17 interviews were conducted, which provided a wealth of insights. It was not the purpose of the research to judge asset management in the Netherlands, nor to provide a benchmark. The interviews were conducted by Joost Jongerius, Tom Meijerink and Jan van Miltenburg of Evers and Manders consult in commission of the Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation 5. To provide as much room as possible to the interviewees to talk about the issues close to heart, the option of open interviews was chosen instead of standardized interviews with structured questions. To facilitate comparing different interviews, a checklist of topics to be addressed in the interviews was prepared. This checklist is presented in table1. Table 1. Overview of interview protocol. Main topic Item The concept: How do you define asset management? Which assets? Which performance criteria How do you determine the criteria Development of asset management within the organisation Organisation Asset Owner or Service Provider Position of asset managent within organisation Reporting line to board of directors Number of disciplines/employees involved Balancing and prioritizing between disciplines Who determines budgets for investment and maintenance? Implementation Are there asset registers How is condition of assets established and monitored? Are the data sufficient for analysis Are there methods for risk analysis used? In which phases of the lifecycle (design, operation, decommissioning) are those employed? Are there maintenance and investment plans? Knowledge aquisition How is knowledge acquired and managed? Most important knowledge gaps? Expected benefit of extra knowledge? Use of benchmarks? Room for improvement: Organization What would be a real Culture breaktrough? Tools/knowledge As mentioned earlier, the objective was establishing the key issues in asset management across all sectors. However, this does not mean that only the average knowledge gap will be presented. The purpose was both illuminating where participants of the platform can learn from each other, possibly facilitated by a knowledge dissemination program of NGInfra, as well as establishing where (university based) research was needed to advance the profession. To achieve this, the differences between and within sectors provide a much wealthier insight than the average value. 5 Jongerius, J. Meijerink, T., Miltenburg, J. van, Added-Value Performance, Infrastructure asset management in the Netherlands, a study in seven sectors, Evers & Manders Consult BV, June

5 3 DIRECT RESULTS 3.1 The concept of Asset Management Asset management definition All interviewees agreed that the concept of Asset Management was on the efficient delivery of desired performance. But this is an empty statement, as it can apply to many forms of management. It only becomes meaningful if the considerations which fall in the realm of asset management are further specified. With respect to this, three streams could be recognized: 1. Asset management as the professionalization of maintenance and operation In many organisations (of Asset owners) Asset management was limited to the operational part of the Asset life cycle. In those organizations, the production function (in cooperation with the maintenance function) was responsible for running the assets. Key objective was availability, supplemented with a pressure on operational costs. In the 1990s condition based maintenance was introduced, together with tools like FMEA and FMECA. Even though life cycle management was often mentioned in that period, the focus was still on the reliability of current assets and not on total cost of ownership as the concept of life cycle management promotes. Questions on the need for a high reliability were often not asked. Asset management was often not involved in decisions on investment, or sometimes not even in determining the maintenance budget. Only recently, risk analysis was introduced, and then often limited to individual assets and components. Thinking about the asset base and the organization as a holistic entity is still in far future. This vision of asset management can be branded as bottom up asset management. 2. Asset management as part of an organizational performance strategy. A completely different approach is to take the organizational strategy as the starting point for asset management. Asset owners have assets for a reason, and it is up to the asset manager to help the asset owner in achieving these objectives as efficiently as possible. This means determining maintenance for current assets, but also determining the right investment strategy to arrive at a better portfolio of assets, or sometimes even challenging the objectives, as they might be very expensive to realize. Some organizations might call this performance or service management, others refer to the term risk based asset management. The reason for this is that in many infrastructures, no financial gains can be achieved by extra investments, just improvements in performance. All activities and investments are thus basically risk mitigations, hence the name. 3. Asset management as concept of service delivery The service providers active in the field of infrastructure assets see Asset management as a means of extending their service offering. Traditionally, asset owners commissioned the construction of new assets, either turnkey or only as subcontractor for an internal project leader. The trend over time has been in the direction of a broader service offering, including design, operation and maintenance. These DCOM 6 contracts often have long running times. Problems in contracting often regard the over specification of requirements as a means of risk management by the asset owner. Therefore, service providers would like to take up the role of asset manager, where they can discuss the end performance targets with the asset owner and think of the best option to deliver this value. It is like the transition that can be witnessed in telecom. First, backups needed to be made on the computer or server itself, but because of high speed internet access, an online backup service is achievable currently. The asset (the backup tape unit) is thus replaced by a service. As can be concluded from this impression, asset management is mainly limited to the operational level, but is developing into the tactical domain. Few organizations have moved asset management into the strategic domain Performance criteria A number of organizations has to deal with performance criteria that are imposed by external bodies. Road and rail infrastructure has to comply with certain levels of availability, water has an extensive body of quality standards, the high pressure gas transport infrastructure has strict safety risk limits. However, many of those obligations are on a high level and not directly applicable in day to day operation. Asset managers therefore have a role in translating the infrastructure performance criteria into asset performance criteria and internal targets. But alignment between organizational goals and the technical performance criteria is weak. One of the reasons for this is the lack of representation of asset management at the strategic level. The top level sees the added value of asset management, but has a limited view on what asset management can mean (often limited to improving maintenance and operation). Only in a few cases the top level acts as a real asset owner and tries to think what can be achieved with current assets instead of how the cost for the current operation can be reduced. As a consequence, the asset management professionals try to formulate meaningful objectives for themselves and then try to gain support for them. The resulting paradox is that asset managers, as they are not involved in the strategic debate, only can suggest improvements to the current situation. This is expressed by lower costs of the improved, thus reinforcing the (wrong) image of asset management as a tool for cost reduction and thus reducing the probability of being invited to the strategic 6 Design, Construct, Operate and Maintain 5

6 sessions. Only a in a few organizations the asset manager presents the asset owner with different scenarios for cost and performance development. 3.2 Organization As has become clear in the previous section, asset management is in different stages of development in different sectors and companies in the Netherlands. This is reflected in the organizational position of asset management. In many cases asset management is part of the production or maintenance function. In some cases asset management is a separate department with direct representation in the board of directors of the infrastructure manager. However, most infrastructure managers are part of larger conglomerates, and in none of the organizations asset management held a position at the corporate level. If it had a board representation, it was in the board of the business unit. An issue addressed in the interviews was whether asset management was a line or a staff function. In none of the organizations asset management was a true staff function. The interviewees viewed this as the right way, as they would fear asset management as a staff function would be perceived as top down and thus provoke resistance. Building the asset management capabilities bottom up was perceived to be the better option. The result is that many asset managers indicate a large number of employees is involved in asset management. It also means that asset management is on the map and has acquired a strong foothold. Another observation is that asset managers tend to have a technical background, even though many recognize the need for a wider view on the world than only the technical. But they also seem to agree that it is easier to train an engineer in economics than to train an economist in engineering. However, despite the wide recognition of the importance of the social side of asset management, only a few organizations actively encourage their staff to develop itself in that direction by offering training courses. 3.3 Implementation Availability of data The data exist but are not accessible. This was the central theme of all interviews. Some claimed this was a legacy problem 7, but in other cases the data simply did not exist. Assets would have been constructed over multiple decades, and data might not have been recorded at all at the construction, or badly maintained, or lost over time. Some asset owners could not even tell for certain how much assets they owned. This might be hard to imagine for an asset manager working in a production plant where one sees the asset one owns. But in infrastructures, assets are distributed, so you do not necessarily know where to look. Furthermore, underground infrastructures cannot be seen at all. At best, their existence can be inferred from above ground connections, but what and where is not detectable. Another issue mentioned in many interviews was the missing quality of fault restoration data. Often the precise cause of the failure was not recorded, which is a vital piece of information for the asset manager. Despite these shortcomings, asset managers tend to be pragmatic. Even with only 80% of the data available they can make the right decisions. Nevertheless, still a drive exists to get more and better data. In this respect online monitoring systems gained much attention. A concern that many asset managers expressed was that much of the data was experience in the minds of the employees and not as a factual recording. Getting the real data out instead of history colored by rules of thumb was regarded as a big problem. This was further amplified by the uneven age profile of the organization. Employees of asset managers tend to be in the second half of their working life, with many not very far away from retirement Methods and tools One of the themes in the interviews was the use of tools and methods for asset management. With this respect, a division could be made between tools and methods for maintenance and operation on one side, and tools and methods for investment decisions. For the first set, the focus is on registering assets, classifying criticality and optimizing the maintenance strategy. Investment decisions rely more on the prognosis of future behavior and need for maintenance. Tools for maintenance It was found that a number of (IT) tools is used. Every organization seems to have a tailor made solution for their case. These are often adaptations of the commercial available suites like SAP, IBM MAximo or D7i, often supplemented with excel for registration of asset and data. In itself, the choice of the tool is not exciting: all tools deliver comparable features. However, the lack of standardization within organizations forms a barrier to centralization of asset management. What can be observed is that there is a paradigm shift happening in the field of maintenance. In the late 80s, preventive maintenance was seen as the way to reduce costs of the installations, as it limited the share of unplanned maintenance (outages) in the total costs. But nowadays, preventive maintenance is only applied when and where it is really needed. Maintenance is further diversified into use based maintenance, condition based maintenance, and corrective maintenance. The latter one means accepting the risk of asset failure. Tools for investment decisions 7 Data only available on paper or in singular database 6

7 In many cases, the asset managers were not involved in the strategic investment plans. The initiative is often taken at the commercial departments. However, the need for maintenance of the new investment seems to have acquired a foothold in the business case models, and therefore asset managers tend to get involved in the decision making process in a later phase. However, predicting the need for maintenance seems to be a key (and difficult) issue. The history of existing assets can provide some clues for investment decisions, but it is uncertain whether the future asset will behave comparably. In this respect two factions seem to exist. One group of asset managers is building models to predict future behavior, where the other sees them as too theoretical and tends to focus on gathering historical data. One conclusion can be drawn from these interviews. Most asset managers used to think in terms of fixed budgets, which were spent according to best knowledge. But recent years have shown that asset managers are forced to build a business case for their cash needs. 3.4 Knowledge acquisition In the interviews, knowledge gaps and knowledge acquisition was addressed. A clear differentiation between knowledge on assets and knowledge on asset management could be observed Knowledge gaps The major knowledge gap is on asset behavior, especially the long term behavior and prediction of the long term need for maintenance and (re)investment. Those long term predictions are not only important for the asset owners, but as well for the asset service providers. In general, asset managers think that they have good knowledge on asset management itself, and they do not indicate a knowledge gap in this field. They see a need for more knowledge on contracting, as the trend is more towards outsourcing services. Knowledge acquisition Although asset managers have (external) technical courses in their training portfolio, external knowledge acquisition is not important with respect to building knowledge on asset behavior. As mentioned earlier, knowledge exist within the internal organization, and efforts focus on documenting the internal knowledge. External knowledge acquisition tends to focus on asset management in a broader sense, and especially (asset) risk management. Besides courses also many asset management conferences are visited. These provide new ideas, but it tends to be very difficult to apply the acquired ideas in the home environment. A final element is sharing knowledge directly with other organizations in the sector, but the extent varies widely over the sectors. Some multi sector initiatives exist. 3.5 Opportunities The opportunity for improving the profession of asset management was addressed as a final theme in the interview. A number of opinions is shown below with regard to the functions and objectives of the Platform: Don ts Discussion group Lobbying Combined meetings of asset owners and service providers Do s Task force Lobbying Promoting asset management at top management Asset management Hub Modular courses Knowledge centre on tools and methods Demonstrate generally applicable methods and tool Link academic knowledge to practice Facilitator at standardization of data Note that lobbying is both mentioned as a do and as a don t. A trend in the opinions is the interest in knowledge dissemination. Providing master classes, training courses, being a knowledge hub. A number of interviewees would welcome an independent body that could help them in judging the added value of new and improved tools and techniques. 4 KEY FINDINGS 1. Asset management is not yet at the strategic level Even though asset management is still a juvenile science, a significant progression has been achieved. Almost all interviewed organizations implemented the first asset management initiatives around 2002, followed by establishing separate asset management groups or departments around Most of the time has been spent on acquiring support for asset management, working bottom up. In many organizations asset management originated in the functions of maintenance and 7

8 operation, and is still regarded as the professionalization of those functions. However, over the years asset management moved up from purely maintenance decision to judging investments on their maintainability, and thus moved to the tactical level. Nevertheless, asset management is still regarded as a cost centre, and efforts should be spent to save costs. Many investments only result in risk reduction, not in extra profits. Business cases therefore often show a negative result, with the rare exception that reduced maintenance cost justify the investment. Analyses based on total life cycle cost and organizational risk are better suited to convince top management. Asset management then turns into a profit centre, a necessity to reach the strategic level. To achieve this, alignment is needed between organizational goals and technical norms and standards, but this is lacking in many organization. Translating the organizational goals into asset performance criteria could facilitate alignment, and could lift asset management to the strategic level. 2. Paradigm shift Where up until a few years ago mainly use or time based preventive maintenance was applied, currently condition based maintenance seems to be the norm, supplemented with corrective maintenance for non-critical assets. Use based preventive maintenance is only applied if it is really necessary. This is strongly linked to the concept of lifecycle costing. Trying to minimize maintenance cost for existing assets can be a silly thing if assets are available on the market with much lower operational costs, for example because they have higher energy efficiencies. Then the asset should be replaced and not maintained. The concept of lifecycle costing is gaining interest, but it is certainly not widely applied. 3. Performance models and data A key element of asset management is predicting the asset performance and the maintenance need of the asset. However, only a few asset managers relied on models to predict this, as many regarded the models as too theoretical. Most tended to rely on extrapolations of historical data. Paradoxically, at the same time most asset managers complain on the quality and availability of historical data. 4. Soft issues are important Even though asset management was generally considered to be an engineering discipline, most asset managers recognized the importance of the non-technical issues like economics and social elements. Many spent lots of efforts on creating support in the organization. Some even developed specific training modules for the social skills like empathy and persuasiveness, although this was not common. 5 RESEARCH AGENDA: TOWARDS ASSET GOVERNANCE Based on the interview results, a research program was defined in which academics as well as practitioners are participating. The outline of this program is introduced in this section. Much of the research published in the area of asset management seems to deal with maintenance and operation. This is a good thing, as many issues the practitioners face today is related to maintenance and operation. Asset management without attention for maintenance and operation would be empty. Nevertheless, the interview results suggest that it is not the biggest issue asset manager face. That is more in the area of showing the added value of asset management to the whole organization, even if the costs of managing the assets would go up. Currently, asset managers tend to be involved in cost cutting in maintenance, in order to prove the value of asset management. However, we strongly feel that asset management should be more about discussing what the assets could and should deliver in relation to what the company needs them to do. In some cases, it might be wiser to increase the asset management budget as it would reduce the need to build new assets. In other cases it might be better to build new assets, as the cost of increasing the output of the existing assets could be much higher. For new assets, proper attention for the operational costs over the full asset life should be given, as these can outweigh the purchase price by many times. As long as asset management is confined to the maintenance and operation function, companies will not get the full benefit of an integrated approach. They still might build or acquire new assets that are hard to manage, or that are not needed if the current assets are managed properly 8. We strongly feel that this strategic part of asset management should be addressed in our research program. As a start, we made a rough division of the field of asset management into four groups: - Institutional embedding: This deals with how public values are embedded, how interaction with the regulatory bodies is organized, which strategic goals are allocated to asset management, how they are measured and so on. It is about the mission and values of asset management - Internal organization: This deals with the business processes, operating models, authorization, change management, capability development and so on. The key theme is how to guarantee the organization structure fits the mission and values. 8 On AICHE meeting spring 2003 in the Kurhaus (Scheveningen), BP presented the concept of the phantom plant, which was the sum of all production losses. This phantom plant proved to the biggest of all plants. 8

9 - Operational excellence: This is about fine-tuning of what you are doing. In our view, many of the maintenance management initiatives fall within this category. - Contracting: This is both about the make or buy decision (in relation to outsourcing) as it is on the type of contract and the process of contracting in case the decision is on buying. This can be on all levels, from financing (PPS) to the contract itself (only services or DCOM). Theme is how to assure that you get what you want. Crosscutting these four topics are a number of general themes that need to be researched. These are: - Maintenance and replacement: Many infrastructures are old and might need replacement or extra maintenance. How to determine what is best, and how to prepare the organization for the significant increase of work if the assets were to be replaced. - Human factors:. In the end, it is people who determine the success of an infrastructure. How to address this properly, what skills and competences are needed? - Innovation and transition: The use of many infrastructures is changing over time. How to integrate this into asset management. - IT systems and support: A key issue addressed was the availability of data. How to make certain the right data gets to the right people at the right time? Together, these can be grouped into a matrix. Institutional embedding Internal organisation Operational excellence Contracting Maintenance and replacement Human factors Innovation and transition IT systems and support This is a rough structuring of the asset management field. Based on the interviews, we feel that the most challenging and needed topics are institutional embedding and internal organization. One could brand this as strategic asset management, but we feel asset governance is a better name. After all, it is about the structure of asset management, and not on the strategic decisions. 6 CONCLUSION Asset management as a profession has made a significant progress in the Netherlands in the past years, and has acquired a strong foothold in many infrastructure managers. It has moved up from operational decision regarding maintenance to a more tactical level, regarding the maintainability of future assets, but has not reached (given a few exceptions) the strategic level. To reach this, alignment between organizational goals and technical asset performance criteria is needed. However, almost no practitioner really mastered this challenge until now. It is at this point that the academia could provide support. Therefore our current research with regard to asset management focusses on linking asset management goals to organizational goals. The authors prefer to brand this asset governance, to differentiate it from the (maintenance and operation based) operational and tactical asset management. Acknowledgment This research was sponsored by the Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation, 9