City of Brandon Taking Proactive Approach with 2018 Asset Management Initiatives

January 18, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Brandon, MB – The City of Brandon has proposed an ambitious Asset Management Program in 2018 that will allow for a more efficient, transparent, and accurate means of maintenance, renewal, and replacement of Brandon’s wide array of municipal infrastructure assets.

Like many municipalities across Canada, the City of Brandon has placed high priority in recent years on tracking and evaluating the many community assets in its care. These assets range from hard infrastructure like streets and sidewalks, buildings, or water and sewer distribution systems, to softer short-term infrastructure like vehicles and equipment, traffic signs and signals, and park aquatics and playground structures.

In this 2018 budget year, City of Brandon Engineering Services staff will undertake a detailed condition assessment on streets, sidewalks, and sewer pipes under the City’s care, data from which will be entered into its specialized Asset Management Planning software and each of those assets assigned a placement based on a number of priority factors. With more accurate data on an asset’s condition and anticipated lifespan, the City of Brandon will be in a much better position to plan future capital spending.

“With the proactive work being done this year on condition assessments, we will be in a much better position to optimize capital spending each year and over the long-term, this will result in tangible savings within our capital budgets,” states City of Brandon Director of Engineering Services Patrick Pulak. “With better information in hand, it will allow for more synergies and efficiencies when it comes to the renewal or replacement schedule of a particular asset or group of assets.”

Pulak notes that while the City has been leveraging the use of specialized asset management software for a number of years now, this is the first time it will be used to assess road infrastructure in such a complete way.

The City of Brandon’s Asset Management Program has also been augmented this year by the recent receipt of $50,000 in funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Municipal Asset Management Program. With this funding, the City has begun an "Advancing Asset Management Planning and Decision-Making Maturity" project, through which a standardized business case framework and evaluation guidelines for capital replacement is being created.

“This process will not only bolster the existing work Brandon has done in developing its Asset Management Program, but it will further increase the City's transparency, consistency and defensibility with respect to its infrastructure decision-making,” adds Pulak.

The Municipal Asset Management Program is delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and funded by the Government of Canada.