Asset Surveying
Asset surveying, typically referred to as M&E (Mechanical and Electrical) asset surveying, or asset collection, is the process of capturing accurate, on-site information about physical assets in facilities and buildings. An asset survey catalogues equipment, infrastructure and property elements and is essential in ensuring asset data is correctly structured, consistent and up to date, ready for integration into a wider CAFM (Computer Aided Facilities Management System) or IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management System).
Asset surveying plays a pivotal role in the maintenance, safety and efficiency of buildings and facilities in today's built environment, influencing planned preventative maintenance (PPMs), identifying maintenance requirements and structuring maintenance schedules to optimise efficiency and compliance.
Asset surveys can record anything from the condition, location and quantity to the compliance status or operational status of an asset. For organisations managing large sets of facilities, buildings or estates, the goal is to build a reliable asset register that eliminate data gaps, reduce reactive maintenance, ensures compliance with industry regulations, supports informed decision-making, budgeting and long-term planning.
The biggest challenge in Asset Management
One of the most prominent challenges in asset management is the lack of standardisation and consistency in asset data structure, which give building owners, facilities managers and service providers an incomplete, out of date asset register, with inconsistent information which ultimately leads to poor decision-making when it comes to capital planning, compliance and warranty management, and planned maintenance.
These issues could reflect themselves in various ways - inconsistent asset data and errors in survey reports, missing or incorrectly classified assets, incomplete asset registers that were costly to produce, inconsistent terminology and data formatting, poorly maintained asset inventories and unclear policies around asset management.
The next step
Organisations, building owners and service providers should take a more standardised approach to taxonomy and asset hierarchies and understand the importance of up to date, accurate and consistent data across their portfolios in order to maximise the cost-effectiveness and longevity of their assets.
