Introduction of Physical Asset Management Services
TYPES OF ASSETS USED BY ORGANISATIONS
Organisations employ three types of assets:
FINANCIAL ASSETS
The financial management function is usually well funded and well staffed in most organisations. The discipline of accounting was first documented by Luca Pacioli in Venice in 1494. He described the use of journals and ledgers and warned that a person should not go to sleep at night until the debits equalled the credits. The rules of accounting are well established and standardised throughout the world. Financial accounting requires accounting for every financial transaction. This is a labour intensive process yet organisations are willing to employ sufficient resources to ensure that 'due diligence' is applied because they know that not to do so could cause a business to fail.
HUMAN ASSETS
Human resource management is also usually well funded and staffed in most organisations. The factors that determine the capability, motivation and well being of humans are well known and documented. Much has been done to protect people from unfair treatment. The Magna Carta written in 1215 was one of the first documents that specified 'due process', to protect people against the whims and summarary findings and sentences of authority. Later work of Freud, Maslow and many others give clear guidelines for the management of human resources. Much time and energy is spent in organisations on team building and other forms of behavioural and motivational training.
PHYSICAL ASSETS
Physical asset management is generally not valued to the same degree as financial and human asset management. PAM does not have the same legacy to draw from. It seems that from the time animals were replaced by machines, operators and owners concern for the well being of the things they depend on to produce the goods and services of industry declined.
Due diligence as applied to financial assets is wrongfully not considered necessary for physical assets. The worst that can happen to an organisation that does not apply due diligence to the management of its financial assets is that it could go bankrupt. The worst that can happen to an organisation that does not apply due diligence to its physical assets is that people could die, sometimes in large numbers.
Failure modes are the 'currency' of physical asset management. Very few organisations record failure modes that occur, even less anticipate them and even fewer apply 'due process' to determine how to deal with them before they happen.
The first formal process for dealing with failure modes was developed as recently as 1978 by Stanley Nolan and Edward Heap. The first widely accepted, formal documented process for managing financial assets was developed almost 500 years by Luca Pacioli. It is no wonder that physical asset management has not achieved the same level of maturity.
The courses listed here are based on proven 'due process' developed by physical asset management leaders over more than 30 years. They are the fundamentals of best practice that every owner, operator and maintainer of physical assets should aspire to master.
 
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