During Which He Will Illustrate Practical Modelling Techniques For Costing And Scheduling For Optimised Asset Management.

Krige Visser (PhD), a Professor   with   the   Graduate School   of   Technology Management at the University of Pretoria, teaches courses in Maintenance Management and Project Risk Management at master's level. He also teaches courses in continuing education certificate programmes as well as safety, health and environmental risk management and reliability, availability and maintainability.

Prof Visser's presentation at this year's SAAMA conference will illustrate how asset managers can apply basic Excel tools to compare alternative asset acquisition solutions in terms of cost or capital expenditure and risk. "I aim to illustrate the ease of using a commonly-used application such as Excel to achieve accurate results in terms of costing and scheduling, without having to spend thousands of rands on additional software programmes and training for users. Sometimes asset managers avoid these "user-friendly'' tools because there is a misconception that it is a time-consuming and complicated process. I will provide delegates with guidelines on how to apply Excel in an easy but effective manner and demonstrate how to build a simulation model for costing using Excel," said Prof Visser.

Prof Visser will further share his insights into probabilistic costing and scheduling. He further adds: "When a budget or schedule is developed for a project, for example for an outage project or major overhaul, single point estimates are used for budgeting and scheduling. However, this presents a challenge in ''the real world'' as these values cannot be validated due to the many variables that can affect the final outcome (total cost and total duration) of a project. I will illustrate how asset managers can use probabilistic costing and scheduling that will allow them to make more accurate decisions and to monitor the cost and duration of a project during execution in a more effective manner."

The Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management has been established with the aim of sharing collaboratively advancements, knowledge and standards in Maintenance and Asset Management. Risk management is an essential sub-function of asset management as indicated in the 39 subjects determined by the GFMAM. Risk management is essential to manage uncertainty in cost, duration and performance in operations, maintenance and projects. By applying a more innovative and quantitative approach for accurate budgeting and scheduling, the ''uncertainty'' in cost and duration values can be determined, analysed and properly managed.

"South Africa is currently experiencing a downturn in its economy and companies are forced to use their physical assets for extended periods of time. As these assets are aging (for example some of South Africa's power stations have been running for more than 50 years) more maintenance effort is required to keep these assets in a good operating condition. The physical asset management industry has to find innovative ways in maintaining and optimising these assets without having to increase expenditure.

"Asset managers now have a unique opportunity to apply innovative thinking that will result in improved management of physical assets that should have huge savings as a result and thus, increased profits for organisations. We are relying on the asset managers of today to lead the way towards a new era of efficiency, innovation and advancement," Prof Visser concluded.

To register, visit www.saamaconference.org.za