Asset Management & GIS
Optimizing Asset Performance
From bridges, sidewalks and signs to utilities and city parks, assets impact how the public perceives and interacts with their community. With infrastructure aging, finding proactive ways to inspect and maintain these assets is vitally important.
Benesch’s award-winning, proactive asset management approach provides a data-driven path to maintaining, preserving, and extending the longevity of assets for federal, state and local clients. These programs can help not only extend the service life of infrastructure but also increase efficiency, save money and improve public trust.
Powered by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, our experts analyze, collect, and manage data, perform spatial analysis, and track the location and condition of assets in real-time. We develop detailed inventories that help agencies make defendable, data-backed decisions on what actions to take and how resources can be best allocated for the community.
Putting Your Asset Data to Work
Manage Risk
Insight into asset condition is key to managing risk as you care for your aging infrastructure. Accurate and accessibly data allows you to monitor the performance of assets and make defensible decisions about repair activities.
Allocate Your Resources
With most agencies operating under a “do more with less” mindset, resources need to be allocated carefully. Data on assets condition, planned maintenance activities and predicted functional life helps to make you more confident about your allocation decisions.
Plan for the Future
By using your asset data to power predictive models and life-cycle planning, you can make informed decisions regarding long-term investments in your infrastructure. This approach will set your community up for success for the years to come.
Full-Service Asset Management Approach
Leveraging specialized training and extensive practical experience, we help clients to develop strategic and systematic processes for inspecting, operating, maintaining and improving physical assets.
Accurate, relevant and current data is the foundation of asset management decision making. The process starts with the collection of baseline asset data, including information on location, geometrics, site characteristics, risk evaluations and conditions. This data is used to establish inventories and supplemented as new assets are added to or removed from the network. Subsequent conditional assessments occur on a prescribed frequency to update condition and other data fields.
We understand that training and experience matter. Our staff are highly skilled, detail oriented and trusted by clients across the country to collect accurate data efficiently. We use innovative methods, including electronic applications operating on field tablets/phones, drones and vehicle mounted equipment, to improve data quality and efficiency.
Once your data has been collected and effectively stored, we are able to provide condition assessments, reports and databases that prioritize data-driven methods to improve quality, reduce risk of error and allow for streamlined updates. Using condition forecasting methods, Benesch develops advanced models that call on inspection data to help identify preservation and repair activities. These crucial measures can then be used to extend the planned service life of an asset.
While the replacement of an asset is eventually unavoidable, effective Life Cycle Management (LCM) will delay the need for replacement by maximizing the asset’s service (functional) life. While this benefit is enticing, many owners struggle to implement LCM on their own. Success requires numerous steps, including deterioration modeling, preventative maintenance and inspections, reactive maintenance, condition-based rehabilitations and inspections. Partnering with Benesch offers a solution.
Using internal tools and strategic partnerships with AM software providers, Benesch offers LCM services that help you to extend the life of assets without putting a strain on your resources. Our established deterioration models have been validated with academic research programs to ensure our methodology and results can be trusted. We’ll help you to evaluate risks, determine and assess service levels, and identify work actions.
The power and value of field data is only realized when leveraged toward more effective decision making. By using your data for asset reporting and analytics, program development, trade-off analysis, risk modeling and planning scenarios, we’re able to ensure your capital planning is data-driven, transparent and defendable.
Benesch’s Capital Improvement Planning (CIP) services rely on both internal tools and strategic partnerships with AM software providers to help increase your ROI on infrastructure investments. We recognize that variables such as funding levels, asset inventory changes, federal or state mandates, and unforeseen environmental events may justify AM plan revisions. That’s why we proactively manage infrastructure assets with the flexibility to update plans over time.
Implementation of LCM and CIP decisions are achieved by condition-based maintenance (CBM). Through a hybrid of core workflows and AM specific applications, Benesch prepares necessary plan details, incorporates AM condition data, creates accountability and tracking procedures, and assesses work actions to support LCM and CIP decisions. By tracking the performance of each asset following repairs, we further reinforce and/or refine strategies in the AM process. We also promote cost-effective project bundling by developing a wide range of standard repair/maintenance details.
Utilizing enterprise asset management (EAM) software for the storage and management of data? Benesch can help you with the implementation and maintenance of your program. We understand the capabilities and limitations of each major platform available on the market and can recommend an appropriate solution. Partnerships with CityWorks, Central Square, ERSI and others mean we are well equipped to optimize the software for your needs and program goals.
Our services include integration with GIS applications, development of workflows and other resource management procedures. Our experts excel in establishing database connections to automate and streamline updates vital to maintaining efficiency and reducing human error.
Making the Most of Your Software
Investing in asset management software is often a key part of developing your program. However, having it isn’t enough—you need to know how to effectively leverage it for your community’s unique needs.
Using our expert knowledge of the industry’s most used software, we’ll help you evaluate your existing software to enhance workflows for greater efficiency, or help identify which kind of software would work best based on your goals.
Funding & Grant Application Support
Securing funding for asset management programs is crucial for their long-term success. We are prepared to support you through the intricate process of identifying suitable funding opportunities and crafting compelling grant applications. By leveraging our industry knowledge and strategic insights, we’ll help you to secure the necessary resources to drive your asset management initiatives forward.
Stepping Up to the Challenge
A growing and concentrated population, increasing congestion, limited resources and aging are all impacting the infrastructure environment. Focus has shifted from expanding systems to optimizing preservation activities through cost-effective management, programming and informed decision making.
Our generation’s challenge is to repurpose what we can for the future. As engineers, our number one job isn’t to build new networks but to determine how we can maintain and extend the service life of existing infrastructure—and asset management, when implemented correctly, can make all the difference.
Chris Harker, Transportation Group Manager
At Benesch, we’re dedicated to helping our clients be able to make defendable, data-backed decisions on what actions are needed and how their resources can be best allocated to support their communities needs for years to come.
In Kansas City, Missouri, Harker and his team developed an award-winning program that provides the city with a data-driven path to maintaining, preserving and extending the operational lives of their bridges.
Leveraging Spatial Data and Technology
Our ability to transform data into detailed 3D visualizations brings life to your projects. By collecting and analyzing data, our GIS experts aid in planning, design, decision-making, stakeholder outreach and visualization efforts related to all kinds of project work.
Whether you are looking to identify suitable locations for infrastructure projects, analyze traffic patterns for community planning, or manage and maintain current assets, Benesch has the GIS technology and expertise to help.
Improving Accuracy & Efficiency with AI
Leveraging a partnership with Bentley Systems, Benesch experts are revolutionizing how consultants utilize digital technologies to streamline crack detection processes. These efforts have resulted in an automated workflow that changes the way pavement assets are analyzed and managed.
A Digital Twin model is fed through the Pavement Crack Detector software to identify and analyze cracks. Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the new technology improves efficiency and accuracy of data collection activities while reducing inspectors’ exposure to environmental hazards and interruptions to area traffic.
The AI/ML Driven Pavement Crack Detector workflow received Bentley’s Founders’ Honors as part their global 2023 Going Digital Awards in Infrastructure.
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