What is Asset Lifecycle Management?
Effective Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a set of capabilities for you to maximize the value of your organizational resources—people, processes, technologies, and data—by connecting them across the entire asset lifecycle.
ALM reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your assets while increasing productivity and efficiency in every lifecycle phase—from planning and design to construction, operation and maintenance. As your assets ultimately undergo reconstruction, replacement, or decommissioning, ALM supports these phases as well.
Leaving project-centric technology and disconnected workflows in the past, innovative infrastructure and capital project owners are strategically adopting an asset-centric approach supported by ALM-focused technologies. With this approach, your organization’s asset-related data is easily accessible across stakeholder groups, and workflows are connected from one phase of the asset lifecycle to the next. The accessibility of asset-related information—from as-designed and as-built data to condition data and work history—enables your teams to make informed decisions throughout the entire asset lifecycle.
Adopting an ALM approach—regardless of your industry or asset types—provides benefits such as improving asset performance and longevity, operational efficiency, and risk mitigation. ALM also helps your organization align with sustainability goals and environmental considerations—all while improving project outcomes and reducing total costs over the asset lifespan.
Plan and Design
The first phase of the asset lifecycle is planning—a critical step prior to asset construction or acquisition. Organizations and stakeholders must first identify a need that isn’t already met by their existing assets. Using cloud-based, connected software solutions capable of analyzing asset inventory data and trends, your organization can perform a thorough assessment of existing assets, identify gaps and needs, and define the requirements for new or renewed assets. Community engagement is an important element of this lifecycle phase to ensure your project plans align with the community’s long-term goals.
Using the asset inventory data, key stakeholders from your organization—whether that includes state transportation agency leaders, public works officials, or heads of capital improvement programs—can make informed decisions about the addition or renewal of assets. Having inventory data available in the planning phase reduces risk throughout the lifecycle of the new project by enabling informed decisions early on.
The data is used to understand if and when a new asset is needed, how it will be put into service to maximize operational efficiency, whether the creation or acquisition of this asset fully aligns with the organization’s goals, and whether the asset development will adhere to the projected budget and timeline.
Collaborative decision-making between asset owners, project directors, contractor teams, engineers, architects, and community stakeholders ensures a future-focused plan and design phase that takes into account subsequent phases of the asset lifecycle, including the long-term operation and maintenance of the asset, not just its initial construction.
For example, designers may create constructible models for contractors, saving them time from contract acceptance to groundbreaking by providing a complete data set of the construction specifications that can later be used in the building phase with machine controls.
This collaborative approach to delivery fosters synergy between asset design and operational objectives, reducing risk to your organization and enabling seamless coordination from project conception to operation and maintenance.
Build
In the next phase of the asset management lifecycle, the build process transitions from asset identification to asset delivery. The construction project lifecycle includes bidding, contract management, project management, and cost management as well as the asset handover to the operations team. This crucial phase involves aligning the bidding and construction of assets with your organization’s long-term business objectives as the asset owner. A successful build phase emphasizes a strategic approach using a connected data environment that provides centralized, digitized documentation that ensures transparency and accessibility of the data throughout the project.
Digital workflows that connect your field crews to the office staff replace siloed data and paper-based systems, helping to coordinate stakeholders, expedite project delivery, and reduce cost. With digital product delivery, the data on the as-built asset provides a digital twin that provides a baseline of information that your operation and maintenance teams can use going forward, without needing to spend time and resources on regenerating the data from previous phases.
Operate
As the construction phase ends, assets enter the longest period when the asset is put to use, the operation phase. In this phase, asset managers again use asset data, connected workflows, and digital solutions to evaluate and manage the asset’s condition and performance. As the asset owner, you can use enterprise asset management processes and systems to keep the costs of assets under control while aligning the asset's utilization with the broader operational and service goals of your organization.
Maintain
In the field of asset management, maintenance is a foundation for sustained asset reliability and longevity. Implementing a proactive maintenance plan helps ensure safety, performance, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency of an asset. A proactive approach to maintenance prioritizes preventive treatments with the goal of keeping the entire asset network in good repair rather than focusing only on fixing the assets that are in the worst condition. The proactive approach reduces the need for more costly repairs and lowers the total cost of asset ownership over time by extending the asset’s service life.
To improve maintenance decision-making, asset managers use a GIS-centric asset management solution that provides visualized, map-based data on asset inspections, work orders, work history, equipment, labor and material use, and many other aspects of an asset’s condition and utilization. The analysis of this data helps asset managers optimize and implement effective maintenance strategies.
Reconstruction, Replacement or Retirement
The asset lifecycle is typically a continuous loop, with the operation and maintenance phases eventually leading back to the start of a new lifecycle as the asset reaches the end of its service life. At its end of life, the asset is slated for reconstruction, replacement, or retirement. When the asset enters the rebuilding or replacement phase, the data from the asset’s past lifecycle can be used to inform decisions about its new lifecycle.
In the case of disposal at the end of the asset's useful life, the asset lifecycle ends. When you begin each project with the end in mind, your organization can account for the asset’s ultimate disposal during initial strategic and environmental impact planning.
This final stage emphasizes the dynamic nature of asset management, where data-driven decision-making ensures a seamless transition from the conclusion of one lifecycle to the inception of the next, while fostering sustainability from asset construction to end of life.
Strategic Advantages of Effective Asset Lifecycle Management
Effective asset lifecycle management helps your organization to deliver significant strategic benefits—whether you manage public infrastructure or other capital projects. A robust ALM strategy enables you to reduce the total cost of ownership of assets over time while ensuring asset safety, reliability, and longevity. By planning and designing asset lifecycles using centralized data and digitized workflows, your organization can improve resource allocation, collaboration, productivity, and efficiency. Digital solutions with ALM capabilities provide connected, real-time data that enables effective risk mitigation and compliance, ensuring that your business or government agency maximizes asset resilience and meets regulatory standards.
Use Cases for Asset Lifecycle Management
Real-world success stories highlight the tangible benefits of ALM approaches supported by digital technologies.
For instance, Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) is modernizing its facility and operations using best practices of airport asset lifecycle management. Terminals and lobby expansions as well as gate and runway additions are part of the 10-year, $3.1 billion project. Prior to implementation of Trimble’s connected e-Builder and Cityworks digital technologies, the airport used spreadsheets and manual workflows to manage operations—but needed a more efficient approach. After centralizing the project information into a connected data environment (CDE), CLT asset managers are effectively able to manage the design, build, operation, and maintenance phases of these future-focused renovations.
The use of digital technologies for a major bridge project by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) demonstrates the benefits of an ALM-focused approach. With centralized data, 3D models and connected workflows, the Caltrans team improved collaboration with the design and construction teams and improved performance across the lifecycle of the project. Specifically, critical communication at the design stage between the engineer, the contractor, and the owner resulted in improved project planning, including decreased costs and a reduced timeline. Digital technologies based on GPS data of on-site versus planned conditions allowed the teams to digitally stage the project, reducing risk by visualizing potential hazards before the project began. With this holistic and forward-thinking approach, Caltrans was able to complete the project one year ahead of schedule.
Groton Utilities’ experience highlights efficiency improvements leading to better cost control in the utilities sector. Prior to implementing digital technologies, Groton Utilities used legacy systems with siloed data for asset management. These systems did not enable data transparency or data access across various teams within the organization. As a result, opportunities for improved collaboration, efficiency, and cost savings were lost. Now, using Trimble digital solutions, Groton is not only able to manage assets with improved efficiency, but can also make better-informed maintenance and staffing decisions. In addition, taking a proactive, data-driven approach to asset lifecycle management enables Groton to improve service reliability and asset performance while lowering its total cost of ownership of utilities infrastructure.
As organizations adopt ALM practices, asset owners are digitally transforming the associated business processes in federal government, state government, local government, and the private sector. ALM solutions enable organizations to derive value from their collected data like never before. To explore the benefits of ALM in more detail, read Asset Lifecycle Management: A Guide for Capital Project & Infrastructure Owners.
Implementing an Asset Lifecycle Management Program
Implementing an Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) program is a strategic imperative if your organization is seeking to improve project outcomes, optimize operational efficiency, and lower the total cost of ownership of assets. Securing stakeholder buy-in and support of ALM adoption ensures that key decision-makers align with the objectives of your ALM program. Training and team engagement play pivotal roles in the successful execution of ALM, empowering staff with the necessary skills and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Measuring success is an ongoing aspect of ALM implementation. To measure progress effectively, your organization must define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) that gauge the program's impact on cost savings, operational efficiency, and overall asset performance.
Trimble’s Solutions and Expertise in ALM
Trimble's comprehensive solutions provide a framework that helps your organization implement an ALM program tailored to your assets. Spanning all asset lifecycle phases, Trimble's suite of connected solutions is unique in the industry, offering a comprehensive approach to ALM that empowers your organization to execute asset-centric strategies with precision and foresight. Using Trimble's solutions, your organization can centralize asset and project data, streamline workflows across the asset lifecycle, and establish a basis for data-driven operation and maintenance strategies that improve cost-effectiveness and sustainability over the long term.
With unparalleled industry expertise, Trimble’s team of solution specialists, professional services providers, and training and support staff bring the knowledge and experience necessary to ensure your organization’s long-term success.
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