Chapter 2 Summary
TAM Strategy and Planning
This chapter describes how to develop and implement a TAM strategy and Transportation Asset Management Plan.
What’s Important
A TAM strategy is the big-picture outlook needed to integrate asset management with existing business processes and make ongoing improvements once asset management is underway. The strategy establishes agency-specific asset management principles, connects to agency strategic goals, and provides a framework for how asset management will be carried out. A Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) describes the long-term actions and costs to achieve the goals within the framework. Integrating TAM within existing strategic plans and processes is key to ensuring TAM is established and sustained.
How the Guide Can Help
The guide is designed to support a range of approaches to implementing asset management, from incremental improvements to across-the-board organizational change. No matter the approach, a fundamental step in asset management implementation is understanding the current strengths, weaknesses, achievable improvements and the areas where the most benefit can be gained. As described in the guide, this process involves:
- Assessing Current Practice
- Defining and Prioritizing Improvements
- Developing a TAM Implementation Plan
- Monitoring TAM Program Improvements
An integrated view of TAM is critical to its successful implementation. This chapter provides practical guidance on integrating TAM with other existing business processes and related disciplines including:
- Planning and Programming
- Performance Management
- Risk Management
- Data and Information Management
Spotlight on
TAM Plans and Policies
An asset management policy can be the first place an agency communicates the strategy of its asset management program. It helps formalize the scope, practices, and objectives of asset management. It can also serve as a commitment from the agency to stakeholders, establishing high priority initiatives and defining how TAM fits within the agency’s decision-making processes.
A Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) describes an agency’s goals and objectives for maintaining its assets over time. It identifies the most critical assets and their current condition. The TAMP also describes the agency’s strategy for preserving its assets, predicting future conditions given the agency’s planned investments, formulating and delivering an investment plan, and how the agency manages risks to its assets.
Ideally a TAMP should both describe an agency’s assets and planned investments, and detail how it intends to improve its asset management approach. Where an agency has developed both a TAMP and an asset management implementation plan, the implementation plan can be incorporated as a section of the TAMP.