The Right Tools For Asset Management

There are many tools, offered by many vendors, available to help operators understand the condition of their assets. But which do you choose, and how does condition assessment and risk management relate to asset management? Brian Ball, Asset Management and Condition Assessment Engineer for Black and Veatch, has the answers.

He doesn't recommend any particular tool, but notes that "you need to make sure you have the right tool for the right application, that gets you the data you need to create the actionable information that you want to have."

"There are so many of them out there, and the vendors will tell you that they are all the greatest thing in the world, as vendors do," he said.

Still, there are rules of thumb to lead you to the right decision, such as looking at your system programmatically rather than taking a piecemeal approach.

"We like to use the preliminary risk assessment that you do as part of your asset management program to drive the condition assessment, which will then drive your capital program," explains Ball.

And expertise at the beginning of your program pays off. In fact, Ball reveals in this Water Talk interview how proper risk assessment can actually negate the need for condition assessment and its additional expenditure. Listen below.