Governance as a Foundation for Effective Asset Management

Hello, and a very warm welcome to all our virtual viewers and attendees joining the Brightly webinar series today. Thank you for taking time to commit the next sixty minutes with us to learn, be curious, but more importantly, some insights and reaffirm your understanding about the significance of governance as a foundation for effective asset management. So let's jump in. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay our respects to the elders past and present and emerging. I would also like to acknowledge and celebrate our First Nations people around the world and encourage us all to continually learn from their history and teachings in caring for country. Finally, I'd like to extend the acknowledgement and respects to all to any First Nations people joining us in today's webinar. So this is a brief overview of our agenda for today. We're going to do some housekeeping, a bit of an introduction. These are the topics that we'll go through today with our presenters. Governance as a foundation, putting it into practise, translating governance into the real world implementations, and then close out with a conclusion and bit of QA. Now with housekeeping, as you're taking time to hear from us, we want to hear from you as well. So if there's any questions that you might want to have on today's topics or any comments in general, please feel free to use the Q and A function available on your screen and jot that down. And we'll see if we can answer them throughout or leave it to the end of the session for you to, for us to respond to those queries. We've also allowed little bit of time. So our presentation is roughly about forty minutes or so. So we'll leave about fifteen to twenty minutes towards the end to answer some of your questions that you might want to have to ask us as well. And if you want to contact us, please feel free to press the icons available on your screen that you see with us too. So jumping right in, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Anne and I'm a Director of the Client Enablement here at Brightly. My experience ranges from project management, stakeholder and change management all the way to helping the implementation of services, customer success while support predominantly in delivering enterprise asset management software solutions to all of our clients. I'll be hosting the webinar series today on this interesting topic of governance as a foundation for effective asset management. I believe it's very valuable to all of us and I think it will be a very informative session for us today. So I want to just firstly thank you for joining us today, but showing great interest in this topic. It's inspiring to see fellow webinar attendees to also be eager to learn about what governance and the importance of governance in especially in asset management and the industry that we're in. But more importantly, we've got a couple of guest speakers joining us today. I want to introduce Tamara and she'll come on the screen and present next. She is a highly passionate individual. One of her many passions includes working with the communities and fostering a deeper understanding around the importance of asset management, but also how we can become more unified and sustainable given the many years of experience and significant roles that she's delivered over her course of her career, whether it's in government, infrastructure or engineering. And it's great to have Tamara with us today to share some of her valuable knowledge, insights and experience as well. Another person joining us to present today is Steve. Initially Jackie from Ipuya was due to present on behalf of Ipuya with us, but there's just been a slight change. But we kindly welcome Steve with a lot of immense knowledge coming in to talk to us today. Steve is a definitely very friendly face to us all, possibly to all of you as well. He has a depth of knowledge and experience in his role at Ipia, but he's also an experienced civil engineer and strategic infrastructure management advisor. I also believe he's quite passionate about asset management and understanding the importance of leadership and governance in this area. Our bios are all available on the screen. So feel free when you've got time to click on those for more information. So now let's head on to the webinar. Now, one of the things that I want us just to go through quickly as you all do as part of the, you know, when you're doing a webinar, I came across a couple of quotes that I thought was quite important for us to kind of put on the screen, think about and ponder, but that will help us kind of frame this presentation today. So one of the first ones I found was governance is often treated as friction when actually it is what makes sustained adoption possible. I think we hear that a lot, but I think in the last, the next couple of sessions and presenters will go through an understanding of that. And the other one I think is quite valuable is ensuring good governance depends as much on effective implementation as it does on organisational commitment. So maybe just to hand over to you Tamara, so we can discuss a lot about governance in asset management, right? Thank you. Excuse me, thank you, Anne. It's really great to be here with you and Steve today and everyone else who's made the time to be here to dig into such an important topic. And I really do love that you've taken the time to get those quotes to kick off our session today. Because when I talk about governance and I sort of come from it from my years in local government and now working outside of local government, supporting local government, I'm talking about creating the conditions that move councils and other organisations from reacting to problems towards making clear, confident and defensible decisions around your assets and the services that they deliver. So let's quickly discuss why this conversation matters. So we know that assets exist to provide services to the community. We know that when those assets, when those services are kicking along really nicely, you're not really hearing a lot from the community. Those services are meeting community expectations, they're reliable and people probably aren't thinking too much about them. Conversely, when something happens, when there is a service disruption or an infrastructure failure, the impact is felt immediately. That might be a safety concern, it might be a disruption, and then your users or your community start to sort of think about the service and think about the service provider. And that brings that increased amount of scrutiny to how those assets might be being managed. But failures are generally not about one bad decision I find. They come from gaps in governance, risks that weren't surfaced early enough, or there was no clarity on who needed to act or when they needed to act. But good governance is what ensures the right decisions get made at the right time with the right information by the right person or team. So before we kick into me doing a lot of talking today, we are wanting to run a quick poll. So we want to hear from you and we want to understand or hear from you what challenges do you see to good governance in your organisation. And we've put a few prompts there for you to think about. So as soon as you're ready, start ticking some of those boxes. And there's also an option to put in the comments anything that's not on this list. So we're probably going to give you about thirty seconds or probably a little bit longer than that. But I can see that people have started to answer and I guess these are some of the ones that we've put up here on the screen are some of the things that I have seen in local government and also in private practice. And I'm sure that Anne you've seen some of these as well. So I'll be really interested to see some of the results from our participants today. Got about one hundred percent Sorry, Anne. Yeah. No, one hundred percent Tamara. A lot of these topics are quite common, but it's good to see from the poll if this is also quite common across the client base as well, whether it is spoken about in an open forum or whether it's something that you've experienced within the organisation that you don't want to speak about. Maybe it's a bit of embarrassment, maybe it's not sure that it's a common theme across the organisation, but yeah, definitely something that is seen as a pattern. That's right. And this poll is completely anonymous, so no judgement. Certainly we're nearly at seventy percent so we might share the results. Can everyone see it's really interesting results there and again it's probably not unusual to see these results. We're seeing quite high responses with that misalignment between plans, budgets and decision making, especially when you might have say asset management plans that you've spent a lot of time developing, but they're not really being used in that active decision making. You know, a really great example of that is like an asset management plan not being really connected to your long term financial planning and the decisions being made around that. So we also, budgets not aligned to levels of service, levels of service not clear. Yeah, so we can see that these, all of these are relevant for organisations and there's been a couple of comments as well that it is worth managing asset. And I'll read them out because I know that everyone can't necessarily see them. So we can see that data systems don't consistently support asset managers to take ownership, understanding the economic and environmental layers. We have a reluctance by council members and management to recognise the link and continue to demand high levels of service without providing appropriate funding. And asset management does not cater to the power of council resolution. Major investment is determined by community without consultation of asset management. So some very interesting comments there. So thank you everyone. And we're going to unpack some of those comments as well as we go today. So again, one of the things that we've, you know, what that poll showed us is that you're experiencing, you know, what we're sort of seeing more generally, you know, across organisations that manage, you know, diverse assets or asset intensive organisations. And one of the ones that come up, you know, quite often and it's quite a good example is technology implementation. And given, you know, we know that an effective asset management system requires effective tools and technology. We know that that's essential. And tools and technology like Brightly provide Anne, but I think what we can collectively agree on is that that technology will only deliver an organisation true value when the governance and the planning foundations are in place. So organisations might feel that they're not quite ready or they've gone ahead and implemented and are having some challenges around their implementation. Some of the reactive maintenance, you know, you might experience when you don't have some robust governance going on in your organisation, you're in a reactive environment, you're reactive maintenance. And that was in one of the comments that your reactive maintenance is driven by, say, the budget that was brought down, not necessarily being set by the agreed level of service or the determined level of service. So I guess it begs the question at this point is what is governance? So governance can be one of the most misunderstood misunderstood or overlooked concepts in asset management. Often we just get really busy and organisations are just sort of doing the work and it's often treated as the policies frameworks or documents, and they may not necessarily align or integrate with each other. Those documents are important as part of a broader asset management system, but it's not necessarily what I'm talking about here. So governance is not paperwork, it's about the decisions that organisations make, about having clear accountabilities defined, defining decision making, having defined decision making authorities in place, and in asset management having that clear line of sight between your asset management activities and objectives and linking those to risk finance and in broader organisational strategy. Because when it's not clear, people do their best in isolation and that's when you see some of that risk accumulating quietly. So if you could take four things away here and that is four simple questions. If you're a service manager or if you're looking after a service, I know some of you would be looking after many services, think about who decides, who's making decisions about the service based on what information and at what level are they making decisions around maintenance, about planning, and with what level of accountability. So have a think of at least about those four questions and, you know, really reflect on what that's, you know, how that applies to your service that you're managing. It's a really great place to start. Asset management governance is the framework of policies, roles, responsibilities, decision making processes that direct how an organisation will manage an asset or a portfolio of assets throughout their life cycle. And so this slide shows some of those elements of effective asset management governance. The governance isn't about control, it's about clarity. So it sets direction, it defines boundaries and gives people the confidence to make decisions without constantly escalating and or second guessing themselves. And I know I've been there in some of those organisations when there hasn't been that sort of clear direction or clear governance in place. So one of the, just to quickly run through some of these strategic alignment is that line of sight that I was referring to earlier between your asset management objectives, your corporate and your levels of service. Your accountability and structure refers to roles responsibilities and reporting lines for your asset oversight, both at a high level or a policy level, but also for your operational procedures. That might translate into something like being documented in a asset management matrix or asset responsibility matrix, where it defines who's responsible for what and has some descriptions around that. It can also then, when that's clear drive into your asset management information system governance and planning and your software setup if that's a track that you're going down. With your policy and strategic framework, this is referring to ensuring that your governance is detailed in your policies, plans and asset management plans as part of your broader asset management system. New governance should also ensure that you're considering risk and performance. So being able to identify those risks to your service delivery and having mitigation strategies in place and performance metrics and be measuring and reporting on those on a regular basis. And compliance is the must dos, the things that ensuring that your governance arrangements ensure that you're adhering to your legal and regulatory and any internal requirements that you have as well. Sorry, that's the wrong button. So the hard reality is that when governance is weak in an organisation, it might be non existent in some places or it might be inconsistent. Your asset plans don't influence your budgets and their decision decision making, your risks stay hidden and your decisions become reactive and it's harder to defend some of those decisions. And you'll usually find that this is usually characteristic of working in a highly reactive working environment. So when governance is stronger, your leadership can stand behind your decisions with confidence. You'll find that the administration and the officers understand the boundaries in which to operate. And one of the last dot points there with governance that I find in talking both having experienced myself, but also talking with clients is that when you're in an organisation that has high turnover, having good governance in place gives you a framework in which to operate, so you're not always relying on custom and practice and having someone bring new custom and practice in place. One of the this is just a very quick look through on what good looks like. It's an example we use here at Wagtail Red to summarise I guess what good looks like. It's a I guess a five step framework that's underpinned by some really good robust governance. It's also driven on the principle of that good governance and effective asset management requires top down support to support the work that's being done in the office and also the work that's being done in the field. So we'll just, so I guess just to draw a little bit more on that, my belief and you know, what I've seen in practise is that when leaders or the leadership of an organisation owns the pathway forward, your asset management becomes more successful, where asset management improvement becomes a lot more successful. So just quickly, when you're assessing where you're at, you're assessing where you are, but also where you want to be and you're being able to then gather information so you can inform your leaders. Those leaders will then understand the state of play and provide leadership and direction on developing the priorities in line with the broader accountabilities of the organisation, the constraints of the organisation and any other priorities that might be going on that you're just, you know, maybe not aware of. And you know, they can also most importantly give you that kind of authorising environment to proceed. You can then go ahead, build a plan and then start implementing, putting that governance into action with establishing that planning governance and compliance. And you know a key fundamental principle of good governance is measuring and reporting on your progress, be that through a steering committee or back to your executive or council. A couple more slides just left for me. I just wanted to just reinforce this top down and bottom up model in an organisation and why both of those levels matter. So TopDown provides that strategic governance, direction and that bottom up, that execution level where your subject matter experts and you're providing that evidence and practicality and feedback to shape some of those strategic directions. So effective governance needs both of those levels working together to be effective. The leadership sets a direction whilst your delivery bring that strategy to life and make it a reality. So when the strategy and delivery are aligned, they the governance forms a closed loop. So the strategy guides your delivery, and your delivery will inform your strategy. And without that alignment, that's when you find that your asset management becomes a little reactive. I have a very short case study and I'm just going to go over it fairly quickly because I am conscious of time. But this, I want you to think of how a, this example relates to an assay recognition process in an organisation that was struggling with the process. And so think of a road pavement, same corridor, same materials, but if the layers aren't built in the right order or the right standard, even if one layer is out, you know, it will fail and it will lead to fails and constant and expensive rework. And that was what was happening in this organisation around that asset recognition process. Every department was following its own process and timing with really great intentions. Engineering, finance, operations and asset information were coming together with different timing, with different processes and being dealt with in different ways so that the layers didn't align, the processes didn't align and the final asset data was inconsistent and unreliable. So we did fix it, or we did set about fixing it in the sense that getting that leadership buying saying, here's the problem that needs to be solved. Leadership was aware of it, it was becoming an escalating issue. And so we got sort of that authorisation to move forward and fix it. People were compelled. We got the right people around the table. We mapped the current and future view of the organisation and where that needed to go. And then this organisation was then going to set about implementing an organisational wide approach to that. And that sounds like that was really easy. It wasn't, and it takes a lot of time and it's probably a process that's still in place. But the key message here is that good governance is like constructing road pavement properly. Every layer needs to be aligned in sequence and built to a shared standard. And when each team builds its part the same way, you get a strong, consistent, reliable outcome that you don't need to go back and do the rework on. So finally, I guess some take home messages. What does success look like when you've got governance kicking along well in your organisation? Your leaders have a good line of sight. Things like your asset plans are linked to your financial plans and other things. Your governance is clear, accountabilities are in place, you've got transparent reporting happening regularly, and you've got a realistic and achievable uplift program in place that you can continue working through. And most importantly, you've got confidence improving internally in your organisation, but also externally to your key community stakeholders. So I think that's a nice segue over to Steve to talk about some of the practical examples of how to implement governance in your organisation. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, thank you, Tamara. And that's a great outline of the fundamental concepts of good governance, emphasizing good governance here because there's plenty of examples of bad governance, and also the impacts of poor alignment and the importance of clear decision making. So now I'm gonna move into the practical side. And what does governance look like when it's embedded properly? What are the steps organizations can take to avoid those reactive high risk operating environments that Tamara has just described. So my aim over the next few minutes is to give you some grounded examples and practical advice you can use in your own organisation, regardless of where you are in your maturity journey. So nothing like a good story to explain the concept. So I want to open with a real life real world example of what can happen when governance isn't strong enough to support major change. And this story comes from Birmingham City Council in the UK. I'm not expecting everyone to have seen these headlines, but no doubt can probably relate to them, especially if you're in public works and local government. But in summary, what happened was there was a strike from the waste bin collectors, which led to a rat infestation, and then council declaring bankruptcy. So how did we get to that point? But beneath those headlines was an underlying issue, and that was a major IT implementation failure that cost the councils millions. There was a freedom of information request revealed they had to employ around twenty people costing more than two point five million pounds just to manually fix the accounting errors coming out of the system. Those staff spent nearly a hundred thousand hours trying to clean things up, all because foundational governance wasn't strong enough to support the change. So this is a cautionary tale that highlights exactly why governance matters. So what actually went wrong in Birmingham? First, the old software system was shut down just six days after the new one went live, meaning there was no fallback option. So when problems started to appear, they had nowhere to go. And secondly, management didn't adopt the new system out of the box. They customized it quite a lot and even altering standard payment settings to replicate the old system they had before. So the inquiry found and declared the problem wasn't the software as such. The problem was actually embedded in governance. You know, the processes weren't clear. They weren't documented, resonant, so therefore, readiness wasn't established properly. Warnings weren't heeded, and leadership oversight was insufficient. So instead of governance enabling technology, governance failure actually crippled it, and this story still makes headlines today. So some of you may have actually heard of this story in the UK. So in contrast, what does good governance look like in asset management? Firstly, it recognizes that asset management is a whole of organization responsibility. It's never just the engineers or the finance team or the asset managers. So by definition, asset management is the coordinated activity of an organization to realize, and I add add these extra terms, and maintain value because that's essentially what we're doing here in the organization, coordinating all the key players, all the key functions in the business to provide and maintain value. Every function has a role to play, from planning to IT to operations, procurement, CapEx delivery, maintenance teams, you name it, the list goes on. And that involvement doesn't happen by accident. You need clear leadership, clear expectations and alignment across all teams. Good governance creates the environment where all of these areas can work together efficiently and consistently. Leadership plays a critical role in this. Good governance doesn't start with systems or documents. It starts with leadership setting the direction through a clear statement of policy directives leading to a sound strategy with clearly defined objectives. From there, governance ensures every part of the organisation is moving in the same direction. We see many organisations fail to implement improvements because leadership hasn't created clarity. Without the direction, each function defaults to its own priorities and comfort zone, and alignment tends to break down, just like the Birmingham example. So when leadership is clear, governance becomes the mechanism that holds everything together. And one of the most important parts of good governance is understanding where you currently stand. We say this often, but it's true. If you don't measure it, you can't improve it. A measurement as sorry. A maturity assessment gives you an honest evidence based picture of your organization's capability. It shows what's working, what isn't, and where risk is actually accumulating if those gaps are left ignored. So without this improvement efforts are either guesswork or dependent on whoever is the loudest voice in the room. Maturity assessments also support organisational assurance, which is a key outcome expected under the international standards for asset management known as fifty five thousand. These standards provide a clear, consistent way to show leadership and auditors the organization's current capability, and they highlight the gaps that need to be addressed to deliver services safely and sustainably. If we don't regularly assess maturity, we do risk the sleepwalking scenario, and we can walk into these problems unannounced, or worse, we only discover them when failure has already occurred. Once you have the maturity assessment, the next step is turning those insights, those gaps that you have identified into action. And the improvement plan identifies what needs to be done, who's responsible, and the sequence of work, the resources required, and the expected outcomes. And it's those priorities of implementation and improvement are usually geared around the risk. You know, there's gonna be some gaps which are gonna be low risk. Others are gonna be high risk and others somewhere in between. So prioritizing your improvement plan based on risk is absolutely crucial. And it moves us from where we where we know what's wrong to here is exactly how we're going to fix it. And importantly, it ensures your improvement program is realistic. It's prioritized, again, based on risk, and it's actually achievable. So aligning it to your resource capacity is absolutely crucial. No point kidding yourself about those aspirational goals and expectations if you don't have the resource commitment, again, from leadership to make it all happen. So we don't want it to be a giant wish list of things that we need to do that sits on the shelf and never gets done Never never gets addressed, I should say. So here's a few practical examples of actions that commonly come out of a maturity assessment and the improvement planning task. Some are technical, like improving data quality or implementing integrated systems. Some are process based, like documenting key procedures or standardizing how those decisions are actually made, making sure you've got audit and follow-up mechanisms to make sure you're actually delivering on these improvements. And some are actually capability based, such as training your teams across the organization. Because most of the time, as I if people are aware of what the objectives are, have the right skills, they've been trained, It makes the awareness and the improvement task a lot more effective because everyone knows what the challenges are and we have a clear plan moving forward to address them and improve in our own organisation organisation maturity. So it's usually a series of targeted practical actions sequenced in the right order that collectively lift capability over time. And one of the most effective enablers of good governance is a well functioning steering group. Most of you, you know, I would hope all of you actually have an asset management steering group in your organisation, because this group brings together representatives from each of those key functions I've mentioned around finance, ICT, strategic planning, engineering, and so on. And you may ask, well, why? Well, because as I've mentioned already, asset management touches all these key functions. And without this cross functional group and leadership support, your improvement efforts will stall. I see lots of organisations with well committed school practitioners who are tied up with leadership talking the talk and not supporting it by walking the talk. So a steering group ensures decisions are consistent, information flows properly, and the entire organization is working in alignment. So asset management is absolutely a team sport, and the steering group, it can be that team that actually enables strong continuous improvement in your organisation. So what does the steering group actually do? It ensures that asset management practices are applied consistently across the whole organisation. There's no silos, they're all broken down. There's no special rules for one asset class and not the other. It provides a forum for collaboration, a place where people can bring issues, share information, and test ideas. It helps communicate progress and resource needs to the executive team, which is critical for keeping leadership informed and engaged. And finally, it champions success, a key success factor by highlighting the achievements, building organizational confidence, and keeps the improvement plan moving forward. So in short, it's one of the most powerful tools you can put in practice to support long term governance maturity. So I just wanna say thank you for joining Tamara and I today. Governance, it's not sexy. It's not glamorous, but it is foundational, and it it's what protects your organization, your people, your key assets, and your community. Now when governance is strong, asset management becomes easier, more transparent, and more defensible. When it's weak, organisations fall into reactive cycles and technology investments can fail. We hope today has given you practical ideas for strengthening governance in your own organisation. We're here to help, and on that note, it might be time for Q and A. Anne, so I'll hand over to you. Yeah, thanks, Steve. So I think the last couple of sessions we presented with Steve and Tamara, thank you for sending those definitions across as well. I think it's quite valuable to others understand around what is governance, what key practical actions can occur within an organisation to kind of put good governance in place. But those case studies is always good to learn from them in understanding what good governance looks like, but also what bad governance looks like and the consequences to that. So thank you both Tamara and Steve for kind of presenting those examples, but also giving the definitions and insights into some of the practical exercises in real life. Now, before we move on to Q and A, we wanted just to double check on translating governance into real life or real world implementations. So here at Brightly, for those that have worked with us before, we do have a very dedicated services team as well as technology team that looks after a lot of the projects and implementations with you. But I think the key pillars for us in general is around making sure that we have a dedicated project manager that sits with your implementation projects. And that is key because as you can see in the first pillar there, it's not just a dedicated resource to make sure that, you know, we're progressing the project along, but we ensure that there's a lot more stakeholder involvement when it comes to kickoff meetings, attending regular cadence with project meetings, but also making sure that we document along the way any issues and risks so that we can mitigate them as soon as possible. And where there needs to be some form of escalation that gets escalated back up to the appropriate accountable stakeholders, just as what Tamara and Steve said, right, in order for us to make sure that we have a successful implementation or adoption of, you know, the project at hand in play. So this is where it comes to dedicated project management in the mill. As always with every kind of implementation, we need to have clarity and collective understanding agreement on the scope to then also manage the costs of a particular project. And we typically do that at Brightly through, a kickoff meeting, but also a project plan as a document deliverable. So everyone's all on the same page, not just on Brightly and the resources, but also from the client side with resourcing and obviously the stakeholders that are involved. Obviously, when there's a more bigger project that's at play, there's scope and contract confirmation and understanding so that we're all on the same page. But I think as part of good governance as well, if there's any changes or I don't know, when it comes to a lot more projects going a little bit out of scope, we need to look at variation management, right? So where, you know, you've taken a look at your data sets, you've realised that you had more than one particular data set, all your data sets needs to be cleaned up prior to loading into a new system or tool. And that takes time and that's going to impact the cost for resource, but also time of implementation. So a lot of that's managed, you know, through the partnership between Brightly and the client stakeholder. And obviously, you know, when you want to see progress and tracking of those tasks and activities, there's more sensitive voice management as part of that. So scope and cost management is key when it comes to rightly managing these implementations. But I think one of the most important things, and I deal with this on a very regular basis, is the importance of people within, you know, the organizations. And therefore governance pays a key in the framework in making sure that we are successful in making the appropriate decisions and all in line and clarity. So change management is key. But Steve, you mentioned a very important topic there around steering committees, right? And the leadership and the buy in that you get not from the top, but also from the bottom with the operational, you know, asset managers or the, you know, warehouse managers and the people on the field. Everyone needs to be aware of the project at hand, the goals and the outcomes, but also key accountabilities and roles and responsibilities for each team member and what role they play in the success of this project. And if there is a bit of a misalignment, it needs to be discussed and that's where these regular project meetings come into play and these types of discussions or mitigations, or risks being raised needs to be identified and as we resolved, whether that's with Brightly or that's in hand in hand Brightly and our client base. But I think with all this in play when it comes to implementations for effective asset management, governance plays a key role in a lot of this foundational work. Moving on to one last slide before we head over to Q and A, I thought we'll just summarise a little bit about governance as a foundation or effective asset management. I think it's very important for us to kind of wrap up in the sense that it does bridge the gap between strategy and execution. That's spot on what Tamara said really early on. You might have a lot of strategy. It needs to be communicated, but we need to understand that even though there's a strategy and a thinking and an agreement, there's also people that need to execute this and make sure that it is adopted well adopted across the organisation. With governance in play, you will also identify accountability and control. So if there is anything that goes off the rails, off track, or there's a challenge or there's a roadblock, understanding the matrixes and the stakeholders within the organisation as part of this particular project implementation. It has a clear definition and probably also documented who's accountable, who can make decisions to kind of unblock that particular challenge so we can move forward and progress further. As mentioned, again, steering and direction, as you can see there, the term governance is directly translated to steer. So to drive the implementation towards a very positive outcome, hopefully, but also towards the goal you want to achieve that you would have pointed out or had a purpose at the beginning of your implementation. And then lastly, as everyone would want to make sure that they achieve, you want to prevent failure. So without, you know, the decision made from the top, this is an all hands, all in project for us to be successful across the board. So I think with all those four pillars that makes governance a very strong, significant part of the piece when it comes to the foundation in effective asset management. So let's move over to a bit of Q and A. There's been a few questions, that raised in a little chat forum here. So let me just quickly go through and I'll read them out and see who we can have these answers as well. So there's a few comments that's been raised here. So I'll just read a couple of them as well since we've got a bit of time. A comment's being raised here around the addition of data systems don't consistently support asset managers to take ownership and understand the economic environmental layers. Steve, Tamara, do you wanna make a comment around that at all? Yeah. Look, I'll I'll jump in there. And look, thanks for the for the question. Look, data's data at the end of the day. You know, it's a digit, it's a number, it's least information. So with that information, we can hopefully derive some wisdom from that. So yes, data's data, but make sure you put it to use. We're not just collecting data for data's sake. So with that underpinning evidence to make those wise choices, because really, we're leaning again here to good governance, which is basically the things we do in the business to support decision making. The policies, the data, the people, underpinning processes that drive all that. So making sure that data is credible, up to date where it needs to be up to date, and actually utilised is absolutely crucial in this whole exercise. But it doesn't mean you need more data. Probably find that you already have sufficient data already to inform this decision support. is inconsistency to the, you know, to your question, Clayton, then that needs to be addressed. Again, coming back to the steering group, so that feeds back to the DLT, the executive leadership team, So they can address these inconsistencies in in the in the way the business is actually operating. So then you're bringing in good governance into the organization. So I get it. Former engineer in local government myself. I see the inconsistencies, the dysfunction that occurs. But when those barriers and issues are dealt with by leadership, then we can make big strides going forward. So I'm not sure if I answered the question, but it's a great conversation point. One hundred percent, thanks Steve. Maybe this one's for you Tamara. I'm just gonna group a couple of questions together because I think there's a theme that's coming through with a couple of questions. The first one here is, just a comment around a reluctance by council members and management to recognise the linking to continue to the high demand level of service without providing appropriate funding. And alongside that, I've got another comment saying asset management does not cater for the power of council resolution. Major investment is determined by community without consultation of asset management. Look, are good to be grouped together, Anne. And I think that, you know, and I've seen some of the other questions there, local government is a very political organisation. They've got lots of demands, lots of demands on budget. And I think that in my answer to these questions is that being able to present, you know, to have an engagement with your leadership is a really key element to progressing or even creating understanding around the state of your assets. You know, Steve mentioned the steering group and that is a really good outcome of that first engagement with your executive, potentially even getting an executive sponsor on that committee. And I think there was also another question from a governance officer which was awesome to see in attendance at the webinar, is get a selection of people represented from the organisation on that committee. What you can do then and just so I'm not losing sight of the questions is, you know, some of that information and that story for your executive and also for council. And some organisations I've worked in, some practical examples of that is around budget time is you know, you often have someone from finance saying, yeah, here's the sort of state of play with finance, here's the state of play with capital and the projects that we might deliver. It's also a really great time to do a bit of a, here's the state of the assets sort of internally. Here's sort of our, you know the assets that we have, the renewal requirements, this is sort of what they're costing, here's some of our challenges across our portfolio. The key is to keep it simple and to be able to tell those stories and to make sure that you're keeping your leadership informed and educated about what's going on. Thanks Tamara. This is another question that came through and I'm glad to see a person joining our webinar that's from a governance department here. They've asked the question around how can we best support people working in the asset management states from a governance department. But I think this also aligns back to a question that was also raised around how change management can involve culture change, not just addressing asset management. Look, absolutely. I'm happy to take that one again, Steve. So as mentioned before, it's really great to see someone on this, you've made the time to come along to this webinar today from governance because my advice would be to go out and find the people in your asset management departments or those who are dealing with any sort of asset management or asset care activities, whether it be finance or operations or asset information, build a relationship if you don't have one. And if you have a steering committee, ask if you can come along to that steering committee so you can be part of that process of decision making. And I'm pretty sure nearly ninety five percent that you will be more than welcomed into that. And you would then provide a really pivotal role in helping build that line of sight between your corporate planning and the asset management planning or setting out asset management objectives. So, and in relation to change management, how much does change management involve culture change? Big time asset, you know, basically when we're looking at improving asset management in organisations, it's a process of change. It's about doing things differently and people in organisations sometimes have been doing things the same way for a very long time. Know, Anne, I'm sure you've come up against this when you're looking at sort of system implementations, when that's a big change. So it might be from say spreadsheets or, you know, to software. And so it's about identifying those barriers and understanding where people are coming from and then trying to put some strategies in place. So you don't lose focus of what you want to achieve, but you do need to acknowledge it's a change process. You're going to be doing things differently, and you do need a change management plan to accompany your project management plan. It's not something you can sort of cut out of the budget. No, thanks, Tamara. I think you can Just add to that. Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Was just going to add to that too, those to support those people working in the asset management space, What can you do? Well, the asset managers, well, they should know the timing and the cash needed to do the activities that meet the objectives of the organisation, you know, those service level statements that we have, and those targets that we're striving for. So it's all about, yes, telling the story, but what does that mean precisely? It means communicating what we need and when we need it. And that's that's essentially what the asset management plan is about. So the asset managers should be all over that across all all the key functions in the business. And because particularly in local government and most state agencies as well, you know, fixed assets, you know, infrastructure is is the biggest ticket on the balance sheet. In local government alone, it absorbs nationally around ninety percent of all the assets on the balance sheet. So but these are long life assets. And connecting to the very first question, you know, election cycles, that's that's a very minor spec in time compared to the time the infrastructure assets you have responsibility for, they have responsibility for, are actually in place. So ignoring it is not an option. They have to be mindful of the long term implications. And again, that's the asset manager's role to take the neutral stance and say, well, look, here's the options. Here's the scenarios about timing and money needed to do particular levels of service, to deliver levels of service in the foreseeable future, and attach certain risk statements to each one of those. So when the budget is brought down in the boardroom, they're actually acknowledging as a minimum what their what their risk appetite for risk actually is. And that's a really key consideration, and it puts the asset managers in that neutral position. Telling the story, but communicating the consequences when those choices are made because the asset managers don't make the choices. The engineers don't make the choices. Finance doesn't make the choices. It's those in charge of governance in the boardroom. They make those choices, and they have to be aware of the consequences. Thanks, Steve. I know we've got a lot of chatter that's going on within our Q and A. So I need to just be mindful of time as well. Maybe this question is a good one for us just to talk about too. How does good governance, OKI and asset management relate to one another or do they influence each other? Yeah. Look, you can I'm assuming OKI is performance metrics. I'm not too sure here. Get lost on my own acronyms at time, but good governance and asset management do relate to each other as we articulated. And all the key functions, finance cares about long term financial sustainability. If they're not, they should be. And they care about audit confidence as well. They don't want to get mentioned in parliament if things are not quite right or heading in the wrong direction. IT cares about the data quality and the systems integration. The asset managers and planners care about service outcomes, risk and growth. Whereas the teams down the depot who are operating, touching the assets on an ongoing basis care about the clarity, line of sight, and achievable workloads. So we need to be all working together. So again, coming back to good governance, you know, those concepts, those foundations that Tamara outlined at the start, and some practical examples that I've communicated in the second part of today's webinar, hopefully gel those aspects together for you. No, thanks, Dave. I think we've got a few more questions that's just roughly coming, but I think we might've out of time. So I'm also mindful of people's time, but if we don't get a chance to come across to answer your question, we'll definitely come across and respond to those after this webinar as well. What I'll do, I'll just quickly wrap up here in the last slide. I just want to say thank you. I hope that today you've enjoyed our session. Thanks for your attendance and obviously your multiple questions and interest in governance as a foundation for effective asset management. If you didn't, if you have any further questions more so, please feel free to use the icons at the bottom of your screen to send us an email or request more information. We'll definitely send you a link to the recording to all of the attendees today. So keep an eye on the inbox for future webinars as well. So thank you, to the team and the presenters here, and for joining us at Brightly to do this webinar series.