1. 38 | Nov/Dec 2016 | ME | maintenance & asset management vol 31 no 6
Most enterprise asset management (EAM) systems do not address
the complex demands of managing linear assets such as railroads or
pipelines. The key requirements needed in such systems, for linear
asset management (LAM) that is both technically and financially
effective, are discussed and described.
Five Key Requirements for
Effective Linear Asset Management
Abstract
Introduction
Organisations managing linear or
continuous assets such as roads, rails,
pipelines, and electrical transmission
lines face unique asset management
challenges, yet don’t have fit-for-
purpose tools to manage them optimally.
Most enterprise asset management
(EAM) systems do not address the
complex demands of linear asset
management (LAM). Typically, EAM
solutions are purpose built for corporate
‘enterprise’finance and resource planning
stakeholders, and often don’t take into
account the demands of managing
field-based assets that are not in a typical
hierarchical arrangement – these would be
linear assets.
The result has been a reliance
on disparate systems and processes to
store and report on performance and
cost data, schedule and prioritise work,
and track work progress for linear assets.
Linear asset owners that have integrated
engineering tools during enterprise system
upgrade programmes in recent years, are
having to find workarounds for linear asset
referencing in their asset management
departments.
While this may seem minor, the
performance of these assets is the
life-blood of these businesses. In many
Jim Charboneau
Director, Rail and Utility
Solutions, Utopia Inc.,
Mundelein, Illinois
Flexibility and control to define
linear assets dynamically
Organisations often need to report
on linear assets in different ways. For
example, railways need to be able to
accurately define location attributes
along a track section for the purposes
of work assignment, scheduling or cost
management. Similarly, when integrating
with expert systems sucg as video camera
rail inspection tools, rail head condition
data for a specific section of rail must be
in sync with the equipment register so that
operations and engineering people can
leverage the EAM system to make definitive
decisions on the severity, risk, criticality and
duration of an outage to correct adverse
rail conditions.
Another requirement is the ability
to define a continuous asset within your
network, such as a highway or rail line,
not only as a discrete entity but also
in terms of both physical and financial
context. For example, whereas the
physical characteristics for a given line of
track are fixed (metres or miles) in nature,
the operation context may be defined in
multiple segments with varying operating
(speed) and financial (cost) definitions.
From the perspective of the asset
register, these operating and finance
attributes may change during the expected
asset lifecycle of the track, based on
maintenance strategies applied. These
capabilities are essential for optimising your
field operations, and to facilitate costing,
financial analysis and reporting in line
with your business requirements. If linear
assets can only be defined in terms of
fixed divisions (e.g., a set length or physical
distance), you will likely face complicated,
manual analyses and reporting to work
around this lack of flexibility.
With respect to railroads, positive
train control and operation requires a
wide spectrum view of linear assets plus
weather, traffic volume, and track speed
limits. Triangulating all this data in near real-
time has a significant impact on tracking of
maintenance strategies, asset condition,
and lifecycle costs.
For maintenance costing, financial
analysis and other reporting purposes you
might wish to define railroad segments of
'A place for everything
and everything in its place' is
the key to pristine linear
asset data.
cases, the resulting losses could not be
recaptured if they were to fail – such as
lost revenue and lost customer satisfaction
from energy outages, customer impacts
caused by delays in getting goods to
market via freight rail, or regulatory
fines from mismanagement of public
infrastructure assets.
Linear asset owners must optimise
the value and performance of every asset
throughout its lifecycle, while maintaining
the highest levels of safety, quality,
performance, reliability, and regulatory
compliance across their infrastructure.
“A place for everything and
everything in its place” is the key to
how linear asset data and information
is appropriately defined in your asset
management system – having the right
information at the right time determines
how effectively you can manage it.
Having high performance quality
linear asset information requires a keen
and sharp focus on linear asset master
data governance – a process to keep data
perfect. Providing linear asset stakeholders
with trusted asset information requires
your EAM solution to have the flexibility to
deal with a variety of data definitions, as
well as controls to ensure the linear asset
information is pristine and relevant.
This paper describes five key
requirements that linear asset managers
need in an EAM system and how these can
impact the bottom line:
1. Flexibility and control to define linear
assets dynamically
2. Managing assets out in the field
3. Getting a clear financial picture
4. Implementing the right asset
management strategies
5. Anticipating the future of financially
optimised linear asset management

2. maintenance & asset management vol 31 no 6 | ME | Nov/Dec 2016 | 39
Five Key Requirements for
Effective Linear Asset Management
tools to actively update and log jobs from
out in the field. Back in the head office,
dispatcher dashboards will display exact
coordinates of their teams and the status
of their work – improving scheduling
capabilities and allowing management of
operational and environmental risks.
Based on the savings in crew
windshield drive time alone, some
transportation companies could improve
productivity by over $30 million a year –
not to mention improvements in inventory
handling, field safety and work quality.
Unfortunately, many companies
trying to deploy generic mobile service
applications against their ERP are not
achieving anywhere near that level of
productivity improvement. Linear asset
managers need to take control to get the
requirements they need addressed by
deploying a tightly integrated linear asset
management (LAM) and mobile work
solution.
Getting a clear financial
picture
Companies with significant portfolios of
linear assets can face unique challenges
when trying to maintain a clear financial
picture. For example, it is often difficult to
get the views you need, such as when you
need to break costs down to the specific
segment, roll costs up to support your
district structures, and manage capital
projects effectively.
Recording maintenance costs
accurately
When performing work on any asset, you
need the ability to track the work and
associated costs in a variety of meaningful
ways. Otherwise it becomes difficult to
identify areas where costs are higher or
lower, and then to implement strategies
to address this. For example, if a crew
performs cathodic inspection on a valve
somewhere on a gas pipeline network,
you need to be able to track the cost of
that work against the proper segment of
the asset. At the same time, you need the
ability to roll up valve-related costs across
all the segments of the asset, so you can
compare maintenance costs in different
shorter or longer lengths – or even varying
lengths – along the asset network. A
highway might be defined as a single asset
spanning from mile marker 1 to a district
boundary at mile marker 210. You might
further wish to manage work and costs by
defining mile-long segments within a short
radius of population centres due to their
higher traffic volumes. In outlying areas the
asset could be subdivided into five-mile
segments. You could similarly segment the
highway relative to surface type, service
level needs and/or other considerations.
Organisations also need to
have”everything in its place” to track the
relationships between linear assets and
the discrete assets and other features
associated with them. Therefore it should
be possible to track these items both in a
GIS context and within the EAM system
using linear features attribution.
Having a solid master data
governance (MDG) program and solutions
to rationalise and normalise linear master
data is critical to linear data health.
Examples of linear asset feature data
include not only signals, track sensors and
switch gear but also characteristic data
that provides decision support information
such as speed restrictions in specific areas,
the precise locations of natural features
alongside a railroad track, easements on
land below grade, and so on.
Managing assets out in the
field
Most linear assets are geographically
dispersed, so maintaining them requires
a mobile workforce with the ability to
pinpoint exact locations along assets
for inspection, maintenance and defect
reporting purposes. When referring to
specific locations of assets and work,
it is often useful to be able to shift
automatically between physical and
geospatial references as appropriate.
For example, in a public transit operation
when a complaint is made about a dirty
or damaged bus shelter, the operations
team would reference the transit planning
system to accurately pinpoint the location
along the bus route to create a work
request in the EAM system. A work order
would be produced with accurate work
location, asset configuration data for the
shelter, and spare parts needed to execute
corrective action. The geo-reference
coordinate for that bus stop would be used
by the maintenance planner to determine
the nearest, most available work crew. The
planner would insert this activity into the
work crew’s route and push the order to
the crew’s mobile work order device. Once
the work order is completed this record
would be used to generate frequency and
severity data used to produce work pattern
and asset reliability reports by location,
to improve maintenance strategies or
equipment specifications.
The concept of “a place for
everything and everything in its place”
is once again critical to acquiring field
based data points from “expert” design/
planning systems and asset health tools
like rail track symmetry and road pavement
inspection systems. The ability to refer
between physical and coordinate location
references is essential to supporting the
asset lifecycle through integration with
GIS. It directly enhances operational and
field functions like surveys, inspections,
maintenance, repairs and new construction.
Precise location data makes it easier for
crews to navigate to the right spot so they
can more efficiently record inspections and
defects, and perform maintenance and
repairs. This makes it easier for dispatchers
to “see” where the work is, and adjust
scheduling and dispatch accordingly. The
benefit is that the entire field workforce
can be more efficient by correlating the
locations of multiple work items in an
area. This enables crews to do more work
with fewer resources – saving travel time,
reducing the need to dispatch multiple
crews, and helping to ensure crews have all
the information and equipment they need
to complete their work orders. It’s all about
having the right people, with the right parts,
in the right places.
Once the crew is at the right location,
managing the asset in the field effectively
requires the ability to perform work safely
and within the asset management policies.
Enabling the field with the right mobile tools
can dramatically improve productivity and
safety. Such tools should provide access
to full asset history, the ability to visually
identify parts, step-by-step instructions
for work and safety checklists, and simple
Continued on page 40 u

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areas. As described in the example just
given, work orders can be used to plan,
schedule and execute work on linear based
assets.
A best-in-class LAM system would
leverage work orders as an instrument
capable of tracking any relevant work
activity from both operational and financial
perspectives. In this context, expense
elements like labour and parts, along with
other operational and financial details,
should be retained with the asset record –
readily available to support a wide range of
analytics and decision support.
Support for managing 'districts'
Transportation departments, government
agencies, utilities and other organisations
that maintain linear assets over large
geographic areas often wish to manage
them in terms of “districts” or similar
geopolitical regions. Associating assets
with specific “districts” or “regions”
can support operational autonomy
and flexibility in line with organisational
structure. In this way, districts can more
easily maintain their own budgets for
their overall operations or for individual
projects. Of course, “district” level cost
and performance data need to roll up
through the organisational hierarchy to
support reporting, strategic planning and
investment analysis. What is required at the
LAM level is the ability to logically segment
the enterprise in whatever way optimises
operational efficiency, financial reporting
and budgeting activities.
While only one instance of a linear
asset, such as a highway or transmission
line, would exist within the EAM system,
the asset might traverse multiple “districts”
and be managed in part by each of
them. It should be straightforward to
realign boundaries and assets to support
operational needs without impacting
work history, lifecycle costs and other
asset data – a critical need given the
changing dynamics of customers, budgets,
organisational structure, etc. A best-in-
class EAM system would leverage work
orders as an instrument capable of tracking
any relevant work activity from both
operational and financial perspectives.
Managing capital projects
efficiently
Linear asset intensive organisations
frequently need to identify multiple levels
of activity (project, sub-project, work
order, etc.) as capital projects, in whole
or in part. The LAM system should
therefore make it easy for you to apply
maintenance, repair, construction and/
or project costs to specific segments of a
linear asset, or across multiple segments
or the whole asset. You should be able
to straightforwardly create projects of
arbitrary complexity, and modify them
over the course of construction activities.
This makes it much easier to manage
activities and costs at the capital project
level, while appropriately associating costs
with asset segments for other costing and
maintenance purposes.
Implementing the right asset
management strategies
Because linear assets are widely
dispersed, their characteristics and
condition tend to vary along their length
due to uncontrollable environmental
factors. Linear assets also invariably
encompass numerous discrete assets.
What sections of an asset need more
or less maintenance or repair? How
often does an asset segment need to
be inspected or repaired? What is the
annual maintenance cost of one specific
segment of an asset versus another, and
why do they differ? Answering these kinds
of questions reliably helps optimise asset
maintenance. But simply streamlining
preventive maintenance programmes will
not generally drive significant gains in asset
availability, maintenance costs or labour
utilisation. A more proactive, health-
based approach to maintenance, such
as condition monitoring and predictive or
reliability-centred maintenance, is required.
Support for linear asset predictive
maintenance
Predictive maintenance focuses on
leveraging experiential data to gauge the
condition of assets. This maintenance
strategy seeks to predict when
maintenance should be proactively
performed. This approach is efficient and
“smart” and saves both maintenance
and repair costs over routine preventive
maintenance, by allowing tasks to
be performed when actually required
(as opposed to too frequently or not
frequently enough). A regular inspections
programme is the key to any predictive
maintenance programme. But due to their
geographically dispersed nature, it can
be difficult to inspect linear assets easily
or often enough to support adequate
monitoring. Predictive maintenance
strategies can leverage holistic LAM data
across history, mobile inspections, and
manufacturer specifications to help you
inspect more efficiently.
Linear specific maintenance
instruments
Maintenance plans should contain linear
reference data like patterns and offsets,
and these need to be aligned with
geospatial coordinates – maintenance
plans prescribe the ‘why and when’; the
linear asset information identifies the
‘what’ and the geospatial location data
the ‘where’. Accurate asset and location
information is the foundation for effective
dispatch and asset programme planning
and scheduling.
Asset management based on
condition monitoring
Going a step beyond periodic inspections,
extending asset life and improving
reliability can be accomplished through
condition based monitoring that tracks
one or more key condition parameters
for a linear asset, such that a change
defined as significant can indicate a greater
possibility of failure. This raises an alert,
and drives maintenance or other actions
(e.g., creation of work order or inspection
jobs) to be scheduled automatically to
prevent a failure. Some examples include
track inspection rail cars equipped with
automated track recording as well as
ultrasonic rail flaw detection systems.
Sustaining linear data quality with
master data governance
Once the linear asset with geospatial
master data (locations, maintenance plans,
tasks etc.) are in alignment with asset
maintenance strategies, data stewards
need to keep dynamic linear attribution in
sync with static geospatial coordinates.
Implementing a solid IT/OT information
management of change (MOC) programme
that keeps linear data clean and
dependable is key to ensuring repeatable
success.
Anticipating the future of
financially optimised linear
asset management
Better condition based monitoring is the
foundation for analysing asset health and
y Continued from page 39

4. maintenance & asset management vol 31 no 6 | ME | Nov/Dec 2016 | 41
performance to identify underperforming
areas and allocate capital improvement
resources. For example, a segment
of overhead wires that is performing
poorly due to exposure to environmental
conditions may be a candidate for a capital
improvement project to improve its overall
condition, as well as an indication of the
need to modify maintenance strategies to
reduce future costs. Greater convergence,
visibility and “intelligence” between
operational technology and information
technology systems have the potential to
bring more and more real-time asset health
and performance information into LAM
solutions.
A better-informed response to
real-time asset health can revolutionise
linear asset management, enabling
unprecedented agility in response to
changing conditions. In particular, the
convergence of IT and OT can make
more real-time data on asset state and
health available to streamline maintenance
effectiveness. Integration of condition
monitoring, inspection data and work
processes can drive a dynamic, highly
automated reliability centred maintenance
(RCM) strategy. For example, a
combination of asset history combined
with condition data that indicates a
potential risk could automatically trigger an
inspection order for the nearest crew.
In the case of a defective positive
train control component, with trusted linear
asset data the dispatcher can quickly
pinpoint the failure and the environment
condition in the area from weather feeds.
With all this information, the dispatcher
can accurately determine the impacts on
customers, gauge the scope and risk of the
situation and dispatch work crews. In many
cases these can be life-saving decisions.
A further benefit of IT/OT integration
is that over time asset historical data
becomes increasingly rich, enabling
organisations to better understand the
true condition and health of its assets. The
direct linkage of asset condition monitoring
data with inspection/work data stored
in the LAM system helps build stronger
business cases for repair versus ongoing
maintenance of an asset segment, for
instance. The organisational and financial
benefits of an asset health centred strategy
are enormous: it can enable operations
to better support the organisation, while
freeing up capital to focus on improving
and creating new networks that can
successfully service the demands of
customers not just now, but in the future.
Summary: getting on the right
track for managing linear
assets
Linear asset management demands “a
place for everything and everything in
its place” for defining assets, specifying
location data, analysing costs and
streamlining maintenance for optimal
network performance. The LAM system
needs to address these requirements to
optimise asset performance, availability
and safety.
A quick checklist of the major
capabilities required for managing linear
assets includes-
• Flexible definitions of segments
supporting different work and financial
requirements
• The ability to track relationships
between linear and discreet non-linear
assets
• Precise location data with alignment
between geospatial coordinates and
linear reference points
• Tight integration between LAM and
GIS and master data governance to
sustain data integrity
• Industry-specific mobile work tools
built to tightly integrate to your LAM
system
• Mobile work solutions that -
- Tightly link to your EAM to pull
asset history
- Allow you to identify correct parts
in the field visually
- Support step-by-step field crew
processes built for your industry
- Align field work to your asset
management policies
- Provide safety checklists and
industry-specific compliance
functionality
• The ability to report on costs
accurately:
– By linear segments / patterns
- By district
- Seamlessly between capital
work and operational
management
• Integration with industry-specific
condition monitoring solutions
• Templates leveraging best practices
for equipment maintenance
• Support for advanced predictive
maintenance
• Integration to asset health intelligence
and dashboards
• Support for integrating IT with OT
• Focus on master data governance
(MDG) policies, practices and tools
By having a fit-for-purpose LAM
solution for managing linear assets,
organisations can reduce maintenance
costs and overall operating costs, thus
freeing up funds for capital improvements.
More efficient and effective maintenance
tactics enabled at the linear asset level will
drive optimal asset reliability resulting in
better customer service levels in relation
to cost. These benefits will yield increase
revenues, improved return on assets and
greater customer satisfaction.
About the author
Jim Charboneau is Director, Rail and
Utility Solutions for Utopia Inc. with a global
focus on data services and enterprise
master data governance solutions for asset
intensive industries like oil and gas, power
generation, mining and rail transportation.
From his roots as an apprentice
trained maintenance professional on
the railways of Canada Jim has risen
to more recently lead Enterprise Asset
Management consulting services practices
for Price Waterhouse Coopers Canada
(PwC) and global engineered products firm
ASEA Brown Boveri..
In his role at Utopia, he provides
the industrial computing space with
thought leadership and trusted advice
on the topic of master data governance,
data visualisation and analytics. He is
well known as a social media lion on
LinkedIn where he moderates 25 Groups
on the topic of EAM / Enterprise Asset
Management. He can be contacted at
ocharby@bellnet.ca
Five Key Requirements for
Effective Linear Asset Management
Utopia is a global software, consulting,
and services company specialising in
enterprise data solutions that enable
management and governance of critical
master data for an enterprise. Its “build,
fix, and sustain” approach, along with
best-in-class software, empowers their
customers to get their data right, and
keep it right.