Project owners who have linear capital assets such as railways, metros, trams, highways, roads, gas and oil pipelines, sewage tunnel systems, power transmission network among others, always have the requirement to identify and record the details of all major maintenance and recapitalization projects required to avoid or mitigate any disruption or interruption for the operations and services provided by those assets. Usually, the requirement for those projects will be provided by the maintenance and operation department or entity as well as other departments who are responsible for improving and upgrading the operations of those assets.
To achieve this objective successfully, there will be a need for a solution to capture the details of all those assets as well as capture and align the major maintenance and recapitalization projects with those assets. The solution needs to have the functionality to capture single location assets as well as linear assets. For example, for a metro system, the single location assets will include the different metro stations, metro maintenance, operations and workshop facilities, metro control center among others. The metro system linear assets will include the above ground, above ground elevated and underground railway network.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) that has the asset management and project management functionalities like PMWeb, project owners can have a single integrated platform for identifying, recording the details and managing the execution of major maintenance and recapitalization projects for their portfolio of linear capital assets. PMWeb asset location module will be used to identify the details of all existing location and linear assets. Each asset will be assigned a unique location identity for which all required details will be captured such as condition, type, year in service, spatial latitude, longitude and elevation values among many others. In addition, PMWeb specification allows identifying unlimited number of user defined groups and values within each group to capture all needed details for the identified asset. Those user defined fields can be configured to capture text, currency, numbers, dates, Boolean and data from predefined list of values.
Unlike single location assets where there will a single spatial latitude, longitude and elevation values, a linear asset will include a beginning and ending spatial latitude, longitude and elevation values as well as other spatial latitude, longitude and elevation values to capture the location, direction and approximate length of the linear asset. PMWeb Google map interface allows capturing all those spatial points for the linear asset which could be the above ground, above ground elevated and underground rail network.
For both single and linear asset locations, if there was a need to breakdown the location into segments, PMWeb allows identifying the buildings or segments for linear assets. In addition to the unlimited fields that can be captured at those levels, PMWeb also capturing the spatial location details for each segment of the linear asset or building for single location asset. Further, and for single location assets, PMWeb also allows creating two more location levels for each building. Those are the floor and space (office, lobby, shop, etc.) levels.
In case there is a need to capture the details of specific equipment assets at any single or linear location, PMWeb asset equipment module will be used to capture all possible details on the equipment asset. For example, those could include the equipment manufacturer name, condition among many others.
Similar to all other PMWeb project management processes, pictures, drawings, videos and other documents that are associated with each single or linear location, building, floor level, space and equipment can be uploaded and attached directly to those records or uploaded and stored in PMWeb document management repository and then attached to their relevant records. In addition, links to relevant PMWeb records and imported MS Outlook emails can be added to each process transaction.
The next phase is to capture the details of all major maintenance and recapitalization projects that could become part of the linear asset recapitalization program. As those projects will be at the very early stage, only critical and available information will be captured. The project information will be updated when more details become known and available. Each project will be linked to its relevant single or linear asset location.
It should be noted that all projects identified at all single or linear asset locations, whether approved, rejected or pending decision to proceed or shelve, will be displayed on their relative recapitalization program. PMWeb program module will be used to capture the details of all recapitalization programs that the organizations intends to invest in with all identified projects regardless of their status. The recapitalization programs will include all programs that the project owner might execute on his own or programs that could be delivered under Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) programs.
All those identified projects will be consolidated in a single report where for each recapitalization program, those projects will be reported showing all needed details. Visuals can be added to summarize the information captured in those projects regardless of their status.
The information captured for the recapitalization programs and associate projects will also become to executive stakeholders who might need to display the location of single and linear assets locations for those projects. The dashboard will provide an oversight of those projects as well as their reported performance when they are being executed. Since PMWeb allows capturing all those assets and projects details on a single data source, there is virtually no limit or restriction on how to report a single version of the truth of the complete assets and projects portfolio that the project owner has.
About the Author
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with 40-year service record providing project management, project controls services and project management information system to over than 200 projects with a total value in excess of US $100 Billion. Those projects included Commercial, Residential, Education and Healthcare Buildings and Infrastructure, Entertainment, Hospitality and Shopping Malls, Oil and Gas Plants and Refineries, Telecommunication and Information Technology projects. He is thoroughly experienced in complete project management including project management control systems, computerized project control software, claims analysis/prevention, risk analysis/management (contingency planning), design, supervision, training and business development.
Bassam is a frequent speaker in topics relating to Project Management, Strategic Project Management and Project Management Personal Skills. Over the past 40 years he has lectured at more than 350 events and courses at different locations in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and South America. He has written more than 300 articles on project management and project management information systems that were featured in international and regional magazines and newspapers. He is a co-founder of the Project Management Institute- Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI-AGC) and has served on its board of directors for more than 6 years. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), a certified Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP) and Earned Value Professional (EVP) from the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and Green Project Management (GPM).
Bassam holds a Masters in Engineering Administration (Construction Management) with Faculty Commendation, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA, Bachelor in Civil Engineering – Kuwait University, Kuwait and has attended many executive management programs at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA and London Business School, London, UK.