The public and private sectors have been managing their assets in some form over many years. Recently, however, the concept of asset management has been formulated to draw more explicitly on the principles of business, technology, economics and other disciplines in a systematic and integrated way. It is felt that this offers cost-effective and responsive advantages in managing the public's assets. Other management systems, particularly pavement management, have preceded the current interest in asset management by several decades. Accordingly, it is useful to assess whether there are common elements between asset management and pavement management and if so whether the experience gained from pavement management implementation and operation can be of benefit. This paper shows that in a generic sense asset management has extensive commonalities with its component systems such as pavement management. However, it is also shown that asset management has some issues to resolve in becoming an operational reality. The paper suggests a number of ways or areas in which asset management system development and implementation can benefit from pavement management operational experience. Finally, the paper identifies some technical, economic/technical and institution and user opportunities for innovations and advancements in asset management systems. (a)
Abstract