© Institute of Asset Management. Reprinted by permission. Please contact us to use this material elsewhere. theIAM.

org

14 May 2021

How to stay
on track
A UIC working group helped to promote and develop asset
IAM Global Awards 2020
Team Achievement Award
winner
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Project Achievement Award
winner
management best practice by adapting generic guidance to
the specifics of the rail sector.

by Jude Carey

T
he UIC (Union Internationale des
Chemins de Fer, or International
Union of Railways) is a global
forum for railways. With more
than 200 member organisations, the UIC’s
purpose is to promote and share best
practice in the rail sector. The UIC regularly
engages in knowledge sharing and distils
this knowledge into guidance documents
on a variety of rail-related topics.
UIC members can work with their
peers by joining a range of subject-specific
working groups. One such group is the
Asset Management Working Group (AMWG),
made up of experts from 11 European
national railways, each of which contributes
significantly to its nation’s economy and
sustainability. The AMWG aims to go
beyond sharing best practice and truly push
boundaries in the rail sector.
After the publication of the ISO55000
series of international asset management
standards, it became clear that railways
needed guidance, first on implementing
asset management using ISO55001,
and then on creating a Strategic Asset
Management Plan (SAMP).
As international standards covering all
sectors, the ISO55000 series documents are
generic, as was the existing publicly available

Value Framework
Service Offering
The service that the organisation provides – its reason for
Customer Experience
being e.g. customer experience, capability, capacity
Capacity Capability

The organisation's long-term position statement based

Vision & Mission on the service it provides and the service outputs

Service Outputs
Customer Satisfaction
Service Performance
Service Availability
Safety
The service outputs (performance categories) against
Ecological Sustainability which the organisation will be assessed in its provision
Economic Sustainability of the service offering

Social (Internal & External) Sustainability

The underlying metrics that will be used to assess

Service Metrics the achievement against each service output

Figure 1: Value framework

First published in Assets, the magazine for Members of the IAM. May 2021
 © Institute of Asset Management. Reprinted by permission. Please contact us to use this material elsewhere. theIAM.org

15 May 2021

guidance documents for creating SAMPs.
The AMWG set about developing two new
Application Guides to provide railways with
tailored guidance on implementing best
practice, ISO-compliant asset management
and developing a best practice SAMP.
Drawing on the experiences of rail
organisations that had already begun their
asset management journeys, these guides
would use language and terminology the
sector would understand. They would
also serve as an endorsement of asset
management from rail sector peers, to help
individual railways gain engagement and
support from their senior leadership, which
is considered critical for implementing
asset management.
The AMWG members represent a range
of different cultures, funding models,
customers and stakeholders, levels of asset
management maturity and understanding,
and operating contexts. For those just starting
to develop their asset management system or
SAMP, this project presented an opportunity
to test their approaches as they developed –
and exerted pressure on them to progress.
To develop the two guides, the AMWG
gathered insight from similar asset-intensive
organisations around the world, both in
and outside the rail and transport sectors,
followed by a series of facilitated workshops
with all the AMWG members.
Reaching consensus
Key decisions about the content and
structure of the Application Guides
required the consensus of the 11 AMWG
members. Consensus was particularly
important when developing elements such
as a rail-specific value framework and
aligned decision making framework for the
SAMP Application Guide.
Gaining this consensus was challenging,
but was achieved through valuable debate,
both during the facilitated workshops
and through remote correspondence.
Robust discussions on the meaning of
“value” in transport led to an agreement
that economic, ecological and social
sustainability are all key elements of any
value framework – and accordingly, any
aligned decision making framework.
The group engaged AMCL to facilitate
the workshops. AMCL brought knowledge
of good practice from its international,
cross-sector client base to inform the
project. During the workshops, the
facilitators pushed and challenged the
AMWG members to explore, establish
and articulate agreed best practice in the
context of rail. The facilitators and group
Chair were both invaluable in guiding the
workshops, ensuring all voices were heard
and considered, and reaching consensus.
The ISO55001 Application Guide was
originally framed as “practical guidance
on the implementation of ISO55001” – but
this was quickly changed to “practical
guidance on the implementation of asset
management through ISO55001”, to
recognise that certification should not be
the goal in itself. Rather, ISO55001 is the
framework through which railways can
implement asset management.
The group decided to begin both
Application Guides with executive
summaries aimed specifically at senior
leaders. These summaries introduce asset
management, asset management systems
and SAMPs, and set out the benefits asset
management can bring to rail organisations.
The aim is to help asset managers engage
senior leaders, so they can secure resources
and effectively embed asset management in
their organisation.
The result is a pair of Application Guides
structured to promote and enable the

Corporate Plan, Organisational Objectives, Value Framework & Stakeholder Requirements

Network Development Strategy

Context
Stakeholder Asset Management Policy
Requirements & Value Framework Decision-Making AM System Status
Analysis Summary Summary Framework & Overview
Resource
Summary of Assets Current Situation Operational Performance Strategy
of Organistion Costs & Safety Priorities
Asset Information
Strategy
Objectives
Risk Performance Asset Management Innovation
Criticality Network Objectives Route Objectives Strategies
Management Management Improvement Objectives
Framework Framework
Technology
Assets AMS Improvement Operational Strategy
Risk Strategies Roadmap Strategies
Tolerance
Long Term Plan
Work Financial Resource Access Milestones, Risk
Deliverability
Portfolio Plan Plan Plan & Opportunities Key
Inputs
Route Asset Plans AMS Route Operational Plans Core to the SAMP
Improvement Enabling Strategies
Route Delivery Plans Plan Timetable and Access Planning
Asset Management Plans

Figure 2: A SAMP's content and its interfaces with the broader Asset Management Framework and other frameworks

First published in Assets, the magazine for Members of the IAM. May 2021
 © Institute of Asset Management. Reprinted by permission. Please contact us to use this material elsewhere. theIAM.org
16
Member Railways of the UIC Asset Management Working Group that contributed to the guides
development of an asset management
system and a SAMP in a rail organisation.
The guides represent an alignment of
understanding of asset management across
the rail industry, including agreement on
common terms and their definitions, and
a common core of benefits that all kinds
of railways can achieve. They allow for the
standardisation of approaches across the
industry, offering ways to benchmark, to
identify efficiencies and other opportunities
for change, and to continuously improve.
Beyond certification
At the same time, it was important to
provide additional guidance for more
mature organisations, including sections
that go beyond the requirements of
ISO55001 certification. Developing
the guides has also established new
approaches, such as the value framework
at the heart of the SAMP Application
Guide (see Figure 1). Based on agreement
of what “value” means to the rail sector,
this provides a structured, transparent
approach to asset management decision
making for rail organisations.
For individual rail organisations, the
Application Guides aim to:
— improve the likelihood of senior
management endorsing and sponsoring
the development of an asset management
system and SAMP
— help asset managers efficiently develop
an asset management system and SAMP
— provide confidence that the asset
management system and SAMP
will demonstrate good practice and
compliance with ISO55001.
Since the documents were published,
two of the AMWG members, RFI and OBB,
First published in Assets, the magazine for Members of the IAM. May 2021
have used the guidance to develop their
asset management systems and gain
ISO55001 certification.
Both the ISO55001 Application Guide and
the SAMP Guide have also been endorsed by
the expert technical committee, ISO/TC251.
The Application Guides are publicly
available, not only for UIC members but
also to practitioners throughout the asset
management community. Through these
documents, the latest thinking and best
practice from the rail sector are available for
all to benefit from.
The step-by-step guidance on developing
a SAMP can be used across other industries.
And because the guides were developed to
include railways integrated with other forms
of transport, there are examples that will be
useful in other integrated industries.
Looking forward, the AMWG is working on
three new projects:
— end to end decision support tools (E2E
DST)
— applying Big Data to strategic asset
management decisions
— asset management whole system
decision-making (AM-WiSDoM)
The E2E DST project will produce a
roadmap for developing methods and
tools to support asset management
decision making. It will include a review of
developments in rail and other sectors to
help identify emerging methods and tools
that have the potential to improve asset
management decision making over the next
10-15 years. This will be used to produce a
landscape of future decision support tools
and an implementation roadmap for rail
infrastructure managers.
Big Data has been given less attention in
internal research and development projects,
where the focus has been on shorter-term
May 2021
maintenance interventions to deliver
efficiency and reliability benefits. However,
it is becoming clear to many organisations
that there are potentially strong benefits
associated with better strategic decision
making, such as the opportunity to influence
costs and performance over the whole asset
lifecycle.
The AM-WiSDoM project aims to establish
a framework, and the associated methods
and tools, to support whole system
decision-making.
The size and complexity of the railways
has led to the subdivision of accountabilities
and activities, which has been efficient and
effective for targeting specific objectives. But
while decisions made within a given function
or for a single asset type may be optimised
locally, they are most likely to be sub-optimal
at the whole system level.
This is because many decisions interact
with each other and affect multiple outputs
in a positive or negative way. This means that
money is being wasted, with projects either
failing to deliver the expected outcomes or
having adverse unintended impacts.
Part of the motivation behind AM-
WiSDoM is the need to address major
changes that are coming to the railways,
including digitalisation, automation, artificial
intelligence and the challenges of climate
change. These changes will affect railways
in a fundamental way that can only be
addressed by adopting a systemic approach.
The benefits generated from AM-
WiSDoM will be an increased knowledge
of the aggregate impact of interacting
decisions, which will reduce the uncertainty
associated with major projects and optimise
investments so that they deliver the desired
output in a sustainable way for the lowest
whole-lifecycle cost.
About the author
Jude Carey is a
commercial chartered
accountant and is Head
of Asset Management
in Irish Rail. His roles
include international
rail benchmarking, development of asset
information systems and leading Irish Rail
to embed asset management and achieve
alignment with ISO55001. He joined the UIC
AMWG in 2011.