| The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued an infrastructure report card 2013 giving a bleak cumulative ranking of D+ . The ranking, which grades the condition of 15 infrastructure entities such as drinking water, roads, bridges, energy and dams, is the same as the last time such a report was issued, in 2009. In 2009, the grade was D, still poor. It was stated that there is a risk in reversing the public health, environmental and economic gains of the past three decade if the infrastructure is allowed to continue deteriorating. The current problem is that most of the infrastructures are aging and spending has not been adequate to repair, replace, or rehabilitate assets within the systems. The ASCE estimates that the government and the private sector need to invest $3.6 trillion by year 2020, roughly 22.2% of the GDP.;The historical approach adopted by cities, utilities and other organizations to identify assets for inspection, repair or replacement has been reactive in nature, prioritizing renewals on a first-come, first-served basis as problems arise. This is particularly true for buried infrastructure and large asset networks such as pipelines and overhead and buried cables, which provide particular challenges in forecasting failure. This approach makes year-to-year budgets difficult to determine or justify and usually results in additional expense because reactive measures are typically more expensive than proactive ones.;In contrast, structured risk-based planning determines budgets based on current versus target risk levels, allowing organizations to save money over the long term while developing quantifiable capital planning that can be adjusted based on current budget constraint scenarios. Other benefits include improved customer service resulting from fewer interruptions and more coordinated long-term planning across different departments.;Typical challenges to a proactive approach include a lack of reliable local data on the life expectancy of assets and an inability to effectively coordinate plans across multiple departments. While risk planning proves effective for single infrastructure types, the most efficiency is gained by considering multiple asset types - particularly for underground projects that typically require resident disruptions during upgrades. |
