Safety

Infrastructure lifecycle near end

More than 80 local council representatives are supporting a proposal to cut $10.5 billion in maintenance costs in local community areas over the next five years and calling on the Federal Government to support the plan.
The $10.5 billion corresponds to five-year savings in the consumption of public infrastructure by local council areas, which they say could be achieved without significant additional investment.
?Councils are calling on the Federal Government for support, but this does not mean just throwing funds at the problem,? said Ashay Prabhu managing director of Assetic.
Assetic is an Australian company that provides asset investment and management products, implementation, training, support and maintenance services to local government. It recently released its Public Infrastructure Report 2013.
?Instead, what they want is encouragement and guidance to enable them to proactively manage their budgets, to make the right decisions based on data and not election cycles,? said Prabhu.
?It is likely our roads and water pipes, our essential shared local amenities cannot be adequately maintained in the long term. 
?That is why local government authorities are calling upon the Federal Government to help make this a national priority, before it is too late.?
A federal Treasury Department report outlines the scale of the challenge facing the funding of public services in Australia with the workforce as a percentage of the overall population expected to fall dramatically over the next 40 years.
Over the same period much of Australia?s national infrastructure will reach the end of its maintainable lifecycle.
?As a major provider of road condition inspection services to over 150 councils in Australia, we can see the results on the ground,? said Mike Wilken, managing director of Infrastructure Management Group. 
?We welcome these findings and hope that more agencies can utilise strategic asset management to make assets last longer and obtain better value for each dollar spent.? 
The Assetic Public Infrastructure 2013 report outlines the costs of poor asset management and the opportunity presented by a strategic approach to public infrastructure at the local level.
Sources: Assetic

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