Port operations depend on both short and long-lived assets
By Erik Stromberg * & Helga Sommer **
Strategic asset management is a data-driven process that enables organizations to better manage critical assets throughout their lifecycle, aligned with the organization’s strategic and business goals. In an environment where scarce capital and aging infrastructure are the norm, asset management provides port management with a process to optimize major maintenance investment decisions. As a ‘strategic’ process, the focus is on significant capital assets, with effort led by senior leadership and augmented by input from across departments, down to dock operations and maintenance.
Port operations depend on both short and long-lived assets. Short-term assets, e.g., cargo-handling equipment, typically present simpler maintenance planning due to their shorter economic life. Docks and wharves, piles, buildings, roads and railways, channels and berths, to name some long-lived and strategically critical asset classes, require more deliberate and long-term asset management strategies and practices. Basic data, such as the asset’s condition and lifecycle position, are essential inputs but require careful consideration and effort.
In 2014, ISO 55000 was ratified, reflecting the fact that asset management is a globally recognized and supported management practice. The ISO standard defines asset management (AM) as the ” … coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets… where costs, risks, opportunities, and performance benefits are balanced for the organization to achieve its objectives.” (ISO 55000:2024)
The goal of asset management is to ensure that critical assets are maintained at the required level of service in a manner that is both sufficient and cost-effective. Asset management links the port’s operations and activities with the varied needs and requirements of its numerous customers and stakeholders. This effort yields obvious conclusions for some assets, but for others, the connection is not as clear. Again, input from across the organization is helpful. The asset management process, as affirmed by ISO 55000, provides port leaders with a repeatable, measurable process that optimizes port decision-making at each point in the asset’s life cycle: acquire, operate, maintain, then renew, replace, or decommission.
The Plan
Asset management is implemented through a Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP). The SAMP aligns the port’s critical assets (which require considered, cross-organizational input for designation) with its commercial and public goals and objectives. AM also requires the port to define the ‘required level of service’ for critical assets, determine the asset’s life cycle stage, and translate the port’s strategic and business goals into asset-specific operational requirements.
The development of the SAMP highlights the organization’s values, goals, risks, and resources. The SAMP will include an inventory of the port’s critical assets, an asset management policy, strategic objectives and a plan for achieving those objectives. Given that most ports have limited staff time and resources, the initial SAMP can be focused on a given asset class, a given function, or a specified facility. As the process becomes more familiar and incomplete data is addressed, the SAMP can be expanded.
The AM process begins with data assembled into an asset register, with input from across the organization, indicating the asset’s value to the organization and the required level of service to secure that value. Value, tangible and intangible, can take the form of revenue, economic impact, or community goodwill. Net value is derived from the asset’s appreciated cost, including capital, maintenance, and disposal costs. Determining where the asset is positioned in its life cycle is the next step. This assessment is based on data: trends in asset productivity and maintenance costs. For older assets with incomplete maintenance data, ‘proxy metrics’ may be needed to make that assessment. This underscores the value of record-keeping for both new and existing assets.
Risk Register
Risk assessment is fundamental to making AM processes useful. Risks to the port are varied and dynamic. For example, mitigating risks attendant to climate change through enhanced resilient and sustainable port operations and development must now be part of any risk register and SAMP.
Risk assessment can be viewed as the relationship between the consequences of asset failure (i.e., the asset’s value to the port at a designated Level of Service – LOS) and the likelihood of failure (i.e., condition assessment and lifecycle position). This relationship can be graphically portrayed in a heat map, with the port’s critical assets plotted according to the best available knowledge of their criticality and their lifecycle position. Port management across the organization and up and down the hierarchy must be involved to achieve accurate placement of the port’s critical assets. This is one of … if not the most valuable … tasks in the AM process.
Heat map
Asset Value and Cost
Financial data adds a third dimension to the analysis. What is the cost of returning the asset to its required LOS? How does that cost fit into the port’s budget priorities–in the next budget cycle and over the next five to ten years?
Asset management is a valuable and proven analytical tool in making optimal capital decisions. However, AM is not an easy task to undertake. First, for an organization such as a Port Authority, with many asset classes and diverse stakeholder needs, achieving consensus on asset value, let alone identifying and prioritizing necessary major maintenance capital expenses, is a challenge. Even more basic is the alignment across departments of asset definitions and value.
Developing a common understanding across the organization for any given asset or asset class (i.e., ‘harmonizing data’) requires effective communication and coordination, as do almost all aspects of asset management. AM guides port management through a continuously improving process that yields defensible, auditable, repeatable, and transparent capital decisions. []
[ FIRST PUBLISHED: Portside Caribbean, December 1, 2025]
* Erik Stromberg chairs the ASCE COPRI Asset Management Task Committee’s Training and Research subcommittee. He is a former CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities and the North Carolina State Ports Authority and was the first director of the Center for Port Management at Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. Erik lives in Bequia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. rolferikstromberg@gmail.com.
** Helga Sommer with more than 27 years of engineering experience in both public and private sectors currently serves as PortMiami’s Assistant Director of Capital Development. Helga oversees the design and construction of the Port’s $4.3-billion Capital Improvement Programme, coordinating teams of engineers, architects, construction managers, consultants, and project control specialists. Helga.sommer@miamidade.gov
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