City hall’s information technology (IT) department plans to spend nearly $300,000 over the next two years to implement a program to better track assets and determine when they need maintenance.
During its 2024 budget deliberations, city council unanimously agreed to authorize the department to conduct an in-house asset management needs assessment and select the necessary software.
Furthermore, council voted 5-2 to approve $150,000 for the 2025 IT capital budget for the purchase and implementation of the asset management solution, $75,000 for the 2026 capital budget to fund further improvements if necessary and $65,000 for the operating budget to fund the assessment management enterprise agreement.
This totals $290,000.
Councillors Dawn Luhning and Doug Blanc were opposed.
City hall does not have an enterprise-wide asset management system, while each department manages and tracks its assets on a one-off basis, a report explained. This results in several challenges, such as:
- No standardization for equipment maintenance and repair
- No central database and visibility of total assets owned or their condition
- Little planning of maintenance activities, resulting in slower, reactive service of equipment, higher repair costs and longer downtimes
- Poor life-cycle management
- No tracking system for maintenance and service records or warranty periods
- No ability to generate reports and analytics on asset use, maintenance costs, depreciation or other relevant data; the current process is manual and time-consuming
- No alerts or notifications for upcoming maintenance tasks; all tasks are manual and tracked through checklists
The project’s primary goal is to identify and track all city-owned assets that require repairs and include them in a software management system that allows staff to create customizable reports and work orders with alerts and notifications, the report said.
Some assets include furnaces, boilers, HVAC systems, refrigeration systems, pumps, and fleet (vehicle) equipment.
“An asset management system will store condition assessments (in) a central location to ensure assets are maintained and records are kept in (a) location accessible to all relevant staff,” said the report.
The document added that some positive outcomes with this new system could include optimal resource allocation, cost savings, compliance and regulations, data-driven decision-making and long-term planning.
City administration told council that the monetary numbers are “ballpark” since it only has a rough idea of the actual costs. However, once it conducts the in-house study in 2024, it should have more informed data for the 2025 budget talks.
Mayor Clive Tolley said that department directors “really, really stressed assessment management planning” during a strategic planning session because it’s important for the city to know what hard assets it possesses.
“I hope when we do our research, we can come up with a solid plan of our assets and, going forward, have a better handle on things,” he added.
Coun. Crystal Froese was pleased that city administration would perform the needs assessment in-house. She agreed to vote for the motions even though the financial figures “weren’t set in stone” and would return during the ’25 budget discussions. She also noted that the municipality could save plenty of money with an asset management plan.
While Luhning supported the in-house study, she disapproved of the other money-related motions because of the difficult budget situation council faced in 2024 and 2025. She noted that council will have to re-evaluate every request it receives, especially with a possible operating deficit of $30 million in 2025.
Meanwhile, Coun. Jamey Logan was happy to support the motions.
“We need to be planning our assets rather than reacting all the time,” he said. “It’s not a huge ask.”
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