From more data to better decisions

The real challenges involved in preserving our heavily used infrastructure lie not so much in technology as in how we make decisions and ensure that they are implemented across the entire organisation and value chain. Many people think of Intelligent Asset Management as an IT solution. But ultimately, it is about making better decisions about your assets: how do you keep them available and reliable for longer, and how do you create greater value throughout their entire lifecycle?

From ‘calling up and Excel’ to creating a single view

Asset-intensive organisations, from railways and energy companies to airports, often face the same problem. Individual departments have their own data, systems and priorities. We sometimes refer to this as a ‘calling up and Excel’ process: employees maintain spreadsheets and call colleagues to request missing information. Each silo has its own version of the truth. As a result, it takes a great deal of time to build a complete picture, even though everyone is ultimately working towards the same goal.

Collecting more data does not solve the problem in itself. You can measure a hundred thousand things. The art lies in determining which information is genuinely relevant when assessing the quality of an asset. Sensors, drones, measurement trains and AI can all help. They reveal patterns and support scenario analysis, but the real value only emerges when an organisation translates those insights into concrete choices.

Looking beyond costs

This also changes how organisations assess performance. Intelligent Asset Management (IAM) is not primarily about cutting costs. Value is also about availability, reliability, safety and societal impact. If you prevent failures, plan maintenance more intelligently and make better-informed investment decisions, the entire value chain benefits.

These trade-offs become particularly complex when infrastructure is used intensively. Money spent on expansion cannot also fund maintenance, while postponing maintenance may affect performance. IAM makes such choices more explicit. You set out the advantages and disadvantages, ensure that everyone understands the priorities and then manage accordingly. Only then does a decision begin to make a real difference.

Implementing a decision through the value chain

This lies at the heart of the change: not merely analysing more intelligently, but ensuring that a decision takes effect throughout the organisation and among its partners. Contractors, suppliers, public authorities and asset managers each view the same infrastructure from the perspective of their own responsibilities. A shared understanding makes the discussion more concrete.

If you explain transparently why you are making particular choices, everyone can work together to manage availability, reliability, sustainability and costs. People no longer reason solely from the perspective of their own interests. This also makes less popular decisions easier to explain. If budget constraints lead to maintenance being postponed, for example, an explicit assessment makes the consequences clear.

Technology requires organisational change

Technology is developing rapidly, but this is also where a potential pitfall lies. The temptation is to focus primarily on the technical solution. Ultimately, however, implementation determines whether it delivers any real benefit. That requires new forms of collaboration, shared information and leaders who genuinely make choices based on the available insights.

Technology makes complexity manageable but does not replace human judgement. AI helps us calculate scenarios more quickly and identify patterns that people would struggle to recognise on their own. Technology helps to make complexity manageable, but people still decide which trade-off is ultimately the right one. Leaders must then have the courage to choose: we invest here, but not there.

From reacting to looking ahead

This is ultimately what we are working towards: an organisation that does not wait for an asset to fail before responding but looks ahead. You want to prevent problems. You want to know which assets require attention, when they need it and what a particular choice will mean for the rest of the organisation and the value chain.

IAM is therefore less a data project than a way of managing an organisation. Data and AI provide a clearer view of the infrastructure; the organisation determines what to do with that insight. It is about making better decisions and ensuring that those decisions are actually implemented. Only then does more information translate into better performance.

Read the article in NRC in Dutch.