FARRER = ASSET MANAGEMENT AND ENGINEERING DESIGN

The understanding of Asset Management and what it actually means has come a long way in the past 10 years. It will also have an increasingly greater impact on all areas of society and commerce in the future.  Within Farrer, the practice and our understanding of modern Asset Management is now interacting with our core Engineering Design skills and is creating opportunities to make a real difference in our home UK market and emerging economies worldwide.

For many, including Farrer, asset management in the UK emerged with water privatisation and regulation in the early nineties where the market demanded efficiency and performance for water customers. Over the five year water regulatory periods, high level statements have shifted from: value for money; efficiency; whole life costs; sustainability; sweating the assets; stewardship; and more recently 25 year strategic statements and business plans. The reality is that advancing technology has made asset management a tangible tool in business planning. Whereas 20 years ago data was stored by paper and the emerging ‘floppy disc’, the technology has now moved to secure wireless and mobile solutions giving real time data ,which can be used in quicker, more targeted, and more efficient business decisions.

Furthermore, early in the ‘noughties’ the British government recognised the importance of asset management in planning how and where to invest public tax payers' monies. It stated that all those agencies in receipt of these funds would require business plans supporting budget applications underpinned by a thorough understanding of Assets, - in effect Britain’s national critical infrastructure such as water, energy, waste, transport and local council systems.