Managing infrastructure assets is a transversal problem, not only for the infrastructure manager, but also for its relationship with suppliers. The efficient management of fixed assets brings increasing benefits, for example, it helps correlate the organisation’s strategic plans with the daily stage of infrastructure works ensuring better results, smaller costs and improved transparency.
The budgets allocated to infrastructure maintenance, renewal and modernisation define asset management as compulsory instrument. The objective is the best performance at the lowest cost.
In response to the European legislation, infrastructure managers and operators had to adopt an attitude closer to the business area such as to change their focus from management to the approach of technical costs and performance.
For many European infrastructure managers, this evolution has led to a situation where interested parties (such as government and local authorities and railway operators) have begun to impose stricter performance and cost requirements, forcing the managers to resort to a new and transparent compensation trade in order to be able to make the right decisions, explains the International Union of Railways (UIC).
The effective model of a railway infrastructure has to be able to meet the objectives of market opening to competition, technological development as well as environmental challenges. “Asset Management (AM) is a new model of management for infrastructure managers, which was developed to meet these challenges. This concept covers facilities, infrastructure and superstructure components and responds to the demands posed by the new situation of railways in Europe”, believe the European Rail Infrastructure Managers (EIM).
Asset management comprises all systems, methods, procedures and tools to optimize costs, performance and risks for the complete rail infrastructure life cycle. These optimizations address all infrastructure activities (building, maintenance and renewal, including machines and materials) over the whole life cycle as well as the consequences of these activities for the government as owner and for the train operators and passengers as users.
According to recast of the First Railway Package and the shaping of the Single European Railway Area, “infrastructure managers have to elaborate and keep record of their assets and of the assets they manage and which will be used to evaluate the financing necessary for their repair or replacement. It will be accompanied by information on costs with the renewal and modernisation of the infrastructure”.
Infrastructure managers set a method for the distribution of costs between the different types of services provided by railway undertakings. Member states, however, have to demand prior approval. This method will be periodically updated based on the best international practices.
The text of the First Railway Package, in its form after the recast, specifies among others that “to allow setting the proper level of infrastructure access charging, infrastructure managers should record and set the value of their assets and provide evidence of clear understanding of all infrastructure exploitation cost factors”.
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