Planning maintenance and finance budgeting

The third key use for whole life performance and whole life cost assessments lies in the need to plan maintenance and budget for the future.

Using whole life performance assessments for planning provides answers to the questions:

• How do we best manage the asset in the future?' and
• What are the cost implications?', in other words how much money should be allowed to maintain and run the assets.

Using the whole life performance and cost outputs in day-to-day planning and management of the assets encourages improved performance in that a feedback mechanism is implemented.

Typically the information from a whole life performance and cost assessment when used for planning purposes is based on data from a database or spreadsheet and displayed as a histogram.

For planning purposes the raw information is often the starting point to rationalise maintenance planning and budgeting.

Typically the peaks and the troughs are smoothed by adjusting the maintenance and replacement activities so that costs are spread evenly in say five-year tranches, as illustrated in the graph below.