Canadian communities are faced with increasingly difficult challenges that hinder their ability to deliver services from infrastructure. These challenges include an aging asset base, financial deficits, climate change, demographic changes, a constrained public funding model, expectations for higher levels of service, rapid and unpredictable technological change, and loss of organizational knowledge as experienced employees retire. Fortunately, infrastructure asset management (AM) can help organizations navigate these challenges and move towards sustainability. When AM best practices are implemented, they can help decision-makers in Canadian communities fully understand the scope of the issues, find and communicate the optimum balance of service, risk and cost for their infrastructure, and plan a financially, environmentally and socially sustainable way forward.

However, industry and public sector infrastructure owners across Canada say their organizations face a serious hurdle when dealing with the country’s infrastructure challenges: They are struggling to build the workforce capacity and capabilities required to develop and implement formal, organization-wide AM programs. The Asset Management Competency Framework for Canadian Communities (AMCF) was developed to meet this challenge.

• Publication date: January 2020