The Nova Scotia Asset Management Program continues to make progress to support municipalities with their infrastructure planning efforts. The Program, developed in collaboration with the Nova Scotia Asset Management Working Group, aims to provide tools and resources that help lay a foundation for making informed, evidence-based decisions to manage municipal assets.
The outcomes of current Program initiatives (i.e. both the Pilot Projects and the Asset Registry) are intended to support the continued development of a standardized methodology for collecting data and assessing the condition of assets, incorporating lessons learned and industry best practices.
In the spring of 2017, the Province launched the first Nova Scotia Asset Management Pilot Project, which supported five municipalities (Mahone Bay, Port Hawkesbury, District of Argyle, Town of Shelburne and Lockeport) in collecting, assessing and maintaining relevant infrastructure information for linear assets (including water pipes, sewer lines, roads, sidewalks, and trails etc.). This project resulted in the development of data collection tools and resources including a linear data collection spreadsheet and an accompanying standard operating procedure guide with a preliminary condition assessment guide. These resources are intended to support Nova Scotia’s municipalities with infrastructure planning by providing guidance for collecting asset data in a standardized way, which is the first key step towards effective asset management.
The tools and resources from Phase 1 were initially made available to all municipalities(upon request) in August 2018, including interim technical support.
The Province is in the process of launching a second Pilot Project, which is intended to continue to provide funding support for municipal linear data collection. Working with the Municipality of the County of Antigonish and the Town of Antigonish in this second phase, provides the opportunity to test the existing data collection tools and resources within a larger rural municipality as well as further explore potential regional collaboration benefits.
The Province has also allocated funding to support the development of an asset registry, based on the tools and resources developed from the first Pilot Project. The goal of the asset registry project is to provide our municipalities with a “one stop shop” system to house, maintain and map asset information, and access preliminary state of infrastructure analytics to further support informed, evidence-based decision making.
Similar to the Pilot Project, the Registry Project is also being developed with a phased design structure incorporating existing Provincial IT/geomatics infrastructure and resources. The first phase of the registry project is currently expected to be rolled out to municipalities later this year. This will provide “viewing” capabilities for municipalities that collect data using the Nova Scotia tools and resources. Subsequent phases of the registry are expected to include data editing, mobile data collection, data maintenance and analytics components. Please stay tuned for updates.
Pilot Project (Phase 1) Tools and Resources:
Please contact the undersigned directly to obtain a copy of the data collection spreadsheet/required folder structure.
As is the case with any project of this nature, it is important for the associated products to be considered “living documents”, which are subject to change/refinement as we continue to work together towards further improving our tools and resources
Eva Mooers
Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Telephone: 902-424-6642
Email: am.info@novascotia.ca