Asset Management:

EmStyles, in conjunction with its professional engineering associates is at the forefront of asset management applied to roads, parks and gardens and buildings under the stewardship of local government in Australia.

Malcolm Styles was a member of the Municipal Association of Victoria’s Step Asset Management program committee which engaged a consortium of three experienced consulting groups to develop and implement the program across Victoria and Tasmania. He was instrumental in the program’s application at Wangaratta, and subsequently encouraged a usergroup to be set up in North- East Victoria.

EmStyles has an association with the CT Management group which is part of the Step Asset Management consortium. EmStyles is able to access the expertise and experience of CT Management for asset management service development.

Malcolm Styles has published and delivered cornerstone papers on asset management. Malcolm wrote and delivered a paper entitled ‘Best Value Asset Management – An Australian Perspective’ to the American Public Works Association’s International Public Works Congress held in September 2000 at Louisville, Kentucky, USA. The paper summarised the progress that had been made at the time by public sector practitioners in Australia and New Zealand on asset management techniques being applied to optimise the useful lives of expensive infrastructure. He spoke about the ‘International Infrastructure Management Manual ‘version 1.0 – April 2000. This watershed publication was developed by Australian and New Zealand public works engineers, and has now been adopted in various versions in South Africa, the USA and Great Britain as well as Australia and New Zealand. An updated version has recently been published. It is available through the Institute of Public Works Engineers, Australia, level 2, 447 Kent St., Sydney, N.S.W.

Australian public works practitioners are challenged to provide optimal answers to the vexed questions of how to manage valuable, and in some cases, irreplaceable infrastructure. EmStyles is well-placed to assist, because of its deep understanding of how to set up and use the frameworks and tools required.

The Step program of the Municipal Association of Victoria is essentially an auditing and training tool that helps establish the gaps and needs of assets - particularly related to roads and buildings under the control of local government. The methodology leads to manageable steps that can be undertaken by even the smallest and most cash-strapped municipality to understand and plan ways to deal with the assets and infrastructure inherited from past governing bodies. EmStyles, through its associations with other experienced and qualified practitioners, can provide municipalities and other key clients expertise on how to get the very best results from these tools.