At Asset Wisdom, we know it’s important to develop the plans, strategies, and approaches that every member of your organisation can follow for asset management success. That’s why we champion the use of a SAMP: a Strategic Asset Management Plan. Essentially, this is a planning tool that clarifies your intentions, priorities, and certain practices that your organisation will adopt.
Who develops the SAMP, and how is it used?
A SAMP is a whole system, whole life-cycle approach to asset management. As such, developing it involves every person in every role in your organisation. It is formally developed as one document or group of interdependent documents. The SAMP is used on a regular basis and is referred to and regularly updated as and when relevant.
It is important to note that a SAMP is not a policy, nor a project. Instead, it is a key piece of any organisational strategy. The success of any organisation usually heavily depends on the condition, capability, and performance of its assets, and developing a robust SAMP helps deliver this success.
The term SAMP was developed in the ISO 55000 standard for Asset Management. The Institute of Asset Management (IAM) has recently updated its guidebook about SAMPs: Developing and Maintaining a Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP). It explains how the SAMP is used to convert an organisation’s objectives and policies into specific asset management objectives which support and facilitate the formation of a high-level, long-term action plan for their delivery.
What role does the SAMP play?
The SAMP has a vital role in aligning the intentions and priorities of an organisation. It is instrumental to establishing and maintaining directional desires. For example, these include discovering where you want to go and why, what you need to do, why you need to do it and when you need to do it by, and exploring top management roles versus the day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and priorities of the workforce.
Through this, the SAMP makes sure your organisation focusses on the longer-term strategic objectives by including all levels at the right time. The SAMP can also identify any asset management training needs.
What are the benefits of a SAMP?
There are multiple benefits to your SAMP yet from an asset management perspective, there are two main advantages:
Collaboration: Your SAMP facilitates stronger collaboration between different departments and functions within the organisation. This allows clearer decision-making, as everyone is working towards a common goal. It involves a whole team approach where, by working together, all staff at all levels understand their role in the development, and subsequent implementation, of goals.
Whole-team approach: There can often be competing priorities within any organisation, from one department to another. A SAMP enables an integrated approach to asset management. Here, all contributions over the whole life cycle are considered, helping you to make better organisational decisions.
To understand more about the SAMP, at Asset Wisdom we have developed a new, advanced online learning module, which is now part of our course library.