THE TECHNOLOGY OF ASSET MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE CULTURE IN ENSURING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Much of the developing world is facing rapid urban development. The UN statistics indicate that 70 per cent of the World's urban population will be concentrated in developing nations by 2030. As cities continue to expand, city governments continuously struggle to provide services to the people. Clean water, sanitation, sewerage services, housing and waste disposal are some of the myriad of services that have to be provided in order to maintain a certain level of acceptable services for human consumption and for the health, safety and comfort of urban dwellers. Yet as city managers continue to expand infrastructure, there is also the hidden but real costs of maintenance of these infrastructure and services. Cities are built environments and so too are the infrastructure that are built to serve commnunities. Thus, communities and infrastructure are intemvined. To achieve quality of life for communities in the urban environ1nent, the service delivery must be there. If there is a break in electricity supply, or there is lack of water supply, or even when a lift within an apartment complex breaks down, the quality of life of its residents deteriorates. As city governments and service providers spend more to upgrade urban service delivery systems, more resources will be used, much more energy and costs incurred to keep the urban assets in working order. This will ultimately lead to unsustainable development. A new technology called Asset Management will be introduced in this paper. Although the technology has been in practice in countries such as Australia and New Zealand in the last 20 years, it remains a new phenomenon in many developed as well as developing nations. This paper will examine the systemic approach in the planning and management of the urban environment, such that this relationship between communities, service systems, quality oflife and urban sustainability, may be revealed.