Happy Thanksgiving to all the Patron Members, Organizational Members, Board Members, ALN Senior Fellows, presenters, and numerous supporters of the ALN. Your active participation and encouragement helped bring our mission of advancing asset leadership and asset management to new heights in 2021. Thank you all for your unified efforts.
How appropriate that Thanksgiving week is the week after the Infrastructure Bill was signed into law. So there is a general thanks for all of the good asset management work that will entail. But there is also a very specific thanks to Chris Vick, Asset Management Director, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation who used his ALN presentation a few weeks ago to describe how the requirement for an asset management plan resulted in full funding for the agencies’ $3.2 billion backlog of repair needs for the next 5 years. That is one of the best illustrations of what a structured asset management plan can do for your organization we can imagine!
See the entire 2021 “Value from Federal Asset Leadership” program, or highlight clips of Mr. Vick’s statement here. Mr. Vick’s presentations was described as a highly clarifying description of asset management benefits by Dr. Dorothy Robyn, who will be our guest on ALN Th@3 pm ET on December 2, 2021, when we resume after Thanksgiving. As always, see more about Dr. Robyn below in People.
We wish everyone has a relaxing and refreshing time with family and friends this Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving.
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People
Dorothy Robyn, who served as the senior real property officer in the Department of Defense and the U.S. General Services Administration in the Obama Administration, will be the guest on ALN Th@3 pm ET on December 2. Dr. Robyn will talk about why federal agencies are increasingly turning to the private sector to manage federal assets through “privatization” of military housing and energy-as-a-service contracts. She will also address the impediments to greater use of such public-private arrangements. Dr. Robyn will also talk about how federal facilities can drive clean energy innovation and not just be a user of clean energy. Prior to serving at DoD and GSA, Dr. Robyn spent eight years on President Clinton’s White House economic team and taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.
Sources
Circular Economy & Endogenous Wealth Engine – Marty Rowland
ALN Senior Fellow Marty Roland provided a web presentation titled “Circular Economy & Endogenous Wealth Engine” for the Council of Georgist Organizations last week. Mr. Rowland’s presentation addressed many topics including the intersection of ISO 55000, the ASCE Scorecard, the Six Capitals, and his own ASTM 3210 standard for operating the assets of municipalities and local governments. ALN influenced his ASTM 3210 standard, which establishes a decision system for managing the complex set of assets controlled by local government. While Henry George, is seen as a radical for suggesting that only land should be taxed, computer modeling techniques now exists to thoroughly explore the ability to show government asset management improvement from any approach. In fact, government has to explore radical solutions because every government now faces radical problems. There is a need for reconciling benefits of the multifaceted 6 Capitals approach, which calls for organizations to report multiple values of success, with systems that do not place human labor and environment in categories for exploitation. The ISO 55001 4.2 requirement for involving all relevant stakeholders could help with this reconciliation. At 90-minutes, it is a deep, provoking, and hopeful presentation.
Ideas
Cryptocurrency as an Intangible Inflation Hedge
Mark Conger, Mayor, Jackson, Tennessee makes a clarifying case for cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation in his interview for the Route Fifty Tech Summit we referenced last week. In the first 7 minutes of the interview, Mayor Conger clearly and simply explains how he sees cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation. There are many questions left unanswered, but this is a good case for the benefits of the intangible asset that is cryptocurrency.
ABS Group provides data-driven risk and reliability solutions and technical services that help our clients confirm the safety, integrity, quality and environmental efficiency of their critical assets and operations.
Upcoming Events
ALN Th@3 pm ET
December 2
Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Nonresident Senior Fellow at Boston University’s
Institute for Sustainable Energy and Board Member of the National
Academies Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment
December 9
Matt Cook, Assistant Director, U.S. Government Accountability Office