FINAL GPSJ Summer edition 2024 ONLINE VERSION.2pdf - Flipbook - Page 16
GPSJ
ROADS & HIGHWAYS
Escaping the Doom Loop
Jason Petsch, CEO of OUTCO discusses how technology is bringing long-term thinking
back to asset maintenance
From being an occasional
menace, potholes are now
ubiquitous on the country’s
roads. Indeed, cratered road
surfaces are becoming a
symbol for national decline.
Growing public outrage forced
prime minister Rishi Sunak to
commit a staggering 8bn of the
money saved from cancelling
HS2 to road repairs a pledge that laid bare the
sheer scale of the problem.
According to some figures
2022 saw 1.4 million potholes
repaired at a cost of £93.7
million. Even so, this spend
had fallen short of what was
needed as, in the same year,
some £22.7 million was spent
on compensation to motorists.
Beyond the hazard facing road
users, there’s a reason the pothole
became a large enough bear trap
for a PM to avoid. According to the
Institute for Public Policy Research
(IPPR) the UK has under-invested
in infrastructure by half a trillion
pounds. Leave aside HS2, this is
enough to fund 30 Elizabeth lines
and has left the UK in a “growth
doom-loop” scrambling to rebuild.
According to the IPPR, a mindset
of investment-phobia has the UK
languishing below the G8 average
and ill-equipped to meet challenges
such as climate change.
Yet this isn’t just a public sector
story. In the world of facilities
management, we’re seeing the
very same picture play out on many
commercial properties and outdoor
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estates. The underinvestment
in maintenance can be seen to
produce worse business outcomes.
Ageing infrastructure, collapsing
fences, and crumbling, potholeridden car parks as a result of
reduced expenditure – we can
see how inadequate investment in
ongoing maintenance creates its
own doom loop: customers start
to go elsewhere, tenants move
out, the retail park, high street or
commercial property dies a death.
Over time, the private sector’s own
investment-phobia is producing the
same sense of decline and reduced
productivity.
Obviously, no organisation
deliberately sets out to terminally
underinvest. There are three
interconnected reasons; The first is
when the approach to maintenance
gets stuck in set ways and simply
repeats what has always been done
without adapting the specification
for maintenance to changing needs.
The second factor is the focus
on the wrong incentives to
procurement departments: these
have historically been rewarded for
delivering year on year on savings
without considering the broader
long-term impacts.
The third and most important
factor is the way that organisations
have outsourced property and
facilities maintenance services.
While outsourcing to specialists
delivers real efficiencies, parcelling
out maintenance to multiple third
parties can eventually erode an
organisation’s institutional memory
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SECTOR JOURNAL SUMMER 2024
and lessen its ability to take a longterm and sustainable approach
to maintaining sites. Where once
you may have had a handyman or
onsite team capable of knowing
everything about a site and
working across a broad range of
maintenance tasks, scattering this
expertise and experience to multiple
contractors means the knowledge
at the centre becomes diluted.
This approach can be cost
effective in the short-term but
without a real sense of continuity
and of ownership, it can become
hard to stay on top of longerterm issues or plan proactively
to anticipate developing issues.
Such challenges are amplified
for organisations with larger
portfolios of sites where the direct
understanding of conditions on
the ground become increasingly
diluted. Over time, the focus
can shift towards basic routine
maintenance while more complex
issues of maintaining the fabric of
buildings can slip.
However, just like the nation’s
pothole crisis, none of this is
inevitable. Thanks to the increased
adoption of technology and
data-driven approaches in FM,
outsourcing can be reconciled with
a sense of sustainable, long-term
care. This can be achieved through
a combination of people, processes
and technology.
A first step is to put in place
better incentives for the teams on
the ground to ensure that they
are rewarded for identifying and
reporting maintenance tasks that
might usually lie outside of their
remit.
This is where technology has
already changed the game, for
example, OUTCO’s teams are
equipped with mobile technology
that makes it easy to record activity
on the go to provide an audit trail
of service delivery. This type of
capability is vital in high-risk work
like winter gritting or snow and
ice clearance where you need
robust and legally defensible
records. It also makes it easier for
grounds maintenance teams to
log newly identified maintenance
tasks quickly and precisely using
geo-spatial tagging. Crucially, the
backend technology powering the
mobile apps used by our teams
also automates the process of
notifying the customer and delivers
quotations for any remedial work.
Aside from the increased
efficiency and convenience, this
data-driven approach is helping to
reconnect organisations with their
outdoor estate and gain a better
real time view of conditions on
the ground. Today, technology is
changing outdoor FM to allow us
to respond better to new needs
as they arise. However, the ability
to take a longer-term view - to
anticipate and pre-empt future
maintenance demands - is where
the real opportunity lies. In pothole
terms, the true prize would be able
to know when to cheaply repair
the tiny cracks in a road before the
surface crumbles into costly ruin.
Ultimately, the outdoor FM world
needs to transition from a reactive,
piecemeal, cost-based approach to
a more holistic asset management
approach, which will be facilitated
by the data driven model. Alongside
the ability to log and track issues
using geo-spatial data, the same
databases can and should be used
to build a digital institutional memory
of each site and each asset and
leveraged to enable more effective
proactive maintenance.
At OUTCO, we’re already
embarking on this journey with
clients, auditing sites, helping them
embrace a longer-term view. This
will help organisations optimise their
resources, enhance operational
efficiency, and ensure the sustained
health and functionality of their
estates.
Embracing this approach is
the key to mitigating the risk of
terminally declining assets and the
potential shocks of unforeseen
expenditures. Moreover, it can help
to foster a culture of innovation
and adaptability, positioning estate
managers to thrive in an everevolving landscape. Ultimately, the
adoption of asset management
principles empowers stakeholders
to navigate challenges with
foresight and resilience, laying the
groundwork for enduring success in
outdoor estate management.
For more information on
how OUTCO can bring a
fresh approach to your asset
maintenance, contact us on
0800 0432 911 email
enquiries@outco.co.uk or visit
www.outco.co.uk