ASSET MANAGEMENT

Critical steps in developing a plan

By Helga Sommer* and Erik Stromberg**

It is worth reinforcing a central theme: the value and the challenge of asset management is that it must be tailored to the port authority’s needs and resources. There is no universally ‘correct’ approach. The goal is better management of critical assets, as the owner deems appropriate for the time. Resources, institutional maturity, organizational capability, and risk tolerance are key factors to be evaluated, prioritized, and integrated into the decision process. For Caribbean public ports, this often means calibrating ambition against reality.

Most ports, not just in the Caribbean but worldwide, operate with limited staff, aging infrastructure, fragmented records, and competing operational priorities. In addition, Caribbean ports face heightened exposure to hurricanes, corrosion, sea-level rise, and supply chain disruptions.

Asset management in this context must be practical, scalable, and resilient; not theoretical or technology-driven. The goal is not perfect data or exhaustive inspections. The goal is sufficient, credible information to support decisions that are better than those made yesterday.

From Fragmentation to Functionality: Why Data Management Matters

Data is the raw material of asset management. It underpins valuation, risk assessment, lifecycle modeling, and capital planning. Yet in many ports, data exists in disconnected forms: in paper drawings, legacy spreadsheets, inspection reports, maintenance logs, procurement files, and institutional memory held by long-tenured staff. The challenge is not always the absence of data—but rather its fragmentation, inconsistency, and inaccessibility.

Without deliberate data management, ports face several common pitfalls:

• Decisions based on anecdote rather than evidence
• Inability to prioritize assets or asset classes based on quantified, strategic value
• Over- or under-investment due to uncertainty
• Loss of institutional knowledge through staff turnover

 What Data Is Actually Needed

An effective AM programme does not start by collecting all data. It begins by identifying decision-critical data. For most ports, this includes:

• Asset inventory (what exists, where, and who owns it)
• Basic asset attributes (age, material, function)
• Description of the required ‘fit-for-purpose’ condition of critical assets or asset classes
• Replacement or rehabilitation cost (order-of-magnitude) to regain fit-for-purpose condition
• Condition indicators (even if qualitative), relative to the required fit-for-purpose condition
• Operational criticality (what happens when an asset’s performance is subpar or it fails).

It is important to be mindful that the asset data available, when collected across the organization and harmonized to facilitate comparison, is often sufficient to begin risk-based prioritization. Continuous improvement in data collection and organization, focused on decision-making requirements, should be a key objective and a measured outcome.

Harmonizing and Normalizing Data

One of the most underestimated challenges in data management is comparability. Ports frequently have different data standards for various asset classes, wharves, pavements, buildings, and utilities, making it challenging to evaluate trade-offs across the portfolio.

Effective AM requires harmonization, not perfection:

• Standard condition rating scales (even if coarse)
• Consistent terminology across assets and asset classes
• Shared spatial references (GIS when possible)
• Precise version control and ownership of records

Many ports have successfully started this process using simple, low-cost tools — structured spreadsheets, shared databases, or basic GIS platforms — before investing in enterprise asset management systems.

Unlocking ‘Hidden’ Data

A significant portion of valuable data often resides outside formal systems.

• Maintenance crews know which assets fail repeatedly and/or require the most attention.
• Operators understand which disruptions or performance levels are unacceptable.
• Engineers recall past repairs and undocumented modifications.

Capturing and recording this knowledge (through workshops, interviews, or structured templates) and applying it are among the highest-value early steps in asset management. Organizational buy-in is facilitated when cross-functional and hierarchical communication yields strategic epiphanies.

Condition Assessments: Right-Sizing an Expensive Necessity

Why Condition Data Is Critical

Condition assessment provides insight into where an asset sits in its life cycle and how quickly risk is increasing. Without condition data, ports are forced to rely on age-based assumptions or reactive maintenance, neither of which is reliable or cost-effective, particularly in corrosive marine environments. However, condition assessments are also expensive and resource-intensive, especially for marine structures, pavements, and buried utilities. The threshold question is which assets require what level of condition assessment.

The range of condition monitoring ranges from ‘run to failure’ to careful monitoring, depending, for example, on the asset’s criticality and the ease and cost of replacement.  Unanticipated asset failure can be expensive to the port authority in several ways. A comprehensive condition assessment programme — which assets, how often, to what level of detail — is worth the investment in time and effort.

A Tiered Approach to Condition Assessment

One best practice emerging across the port industry is the use of tiered condition assessments, in which effort and cost are aligned with asset criticality and risk.  A typical tiered approach may include:

• Level 1: Screening-Level Assessments: Visual inspections, historical review, and qualitative ratings are used to identify red flags and prioritize further study.
• Level 2: Targeted Detailed Assessments: Focused inspections (e.g., nondestructive testing, underwater inspections) for high-risk or high-value assets.
• Level 3: Forensic or Design-level Investigations: Reserved for designated critical assets approaching major rehabilitation or replacement decisions.

This approach allows ports to stretch limited budgets, applying the most rigorous assessments where outcomes materially influence strategic decisions.

Leveraging Opportunistic Inspections

Another effective strategy is to ‘piggyback’ condition assessments onto other activities:

• During construction or rehabilitation projects
• As part of regulatory inspections
• Following extreme weather events
• During routine maintenance access

This reduces mobilization costs and improves data coverage over time.

Carefully Using Proxies and Extrapolation

In many cases, ports must make decisions with incomplete condition data. This is not a failure of asset management. It is a reality. What matters is transparency within and across management levels about assumptions and uncertainty in the valuation of decision outcomes. Quantifying value and risk is a useful way to facilitate comparisons and drive outcomes.

Common, defensible proxies include:

• • Age combined with exposure conditions
  • Performance history
  • Similar asset behavior elsewhere in the Port
  • Industry benchmarks

When used carefully, extrapolation enables progress while signaling where better data would improve confidence.

Overcoming Inertia and Organizational Barriers

The Human Factor

Inertia is one of the most persistent obstacles to asset management. Starting an Asset Management programme requires time and attention — across departments and management levels. Patience and defined end-state values will help to overcome frustration with the lack of short-term, visible payoffs.

In addition, creating a stand-alone Asset Manager role does not automatically solve this problem. If Asset Management is perceived as someone else’s responsibility, there is a risk that it becomes another silo.

Successful programmes share several traits:

• • • Clear executive sponsorship
    • Defined corporate priority
    • Integration with budgeting and planning cycles
    • Respect for operational realities

In many ports, progress depends on a credible champion, someone with technical understanding, organizational trust, and persistence.

Maintaining Momentum

Early Asset Management efforts – data cleanup, workshops, basic inventories – often feel tedious. The benefits — better capital alignment, fewer surprises, and improved resilience — tend to materialize later. To maintain momentum, ports have found value in:

• Delivering early, visible wins (including avoided failures)
• Linking AM outputs directly to budget outputs
• Communicating successes and their quantified value internally and externally
• Iterating progress, rather than waiting for perfection

Why This Matters: Tangible and Intangible Benefits

The benefits of effective data management and condition assessment extend well beyond spreadsheets and reports. Tangible benefits include:

• More defensible capital budgets
• Reduced emergency repairs and operational downtime
• Improved grant competitiveness
• Better alignment of maintenance and capital spending
• Alignment and compliance with relevant operating agreements and lease terms

Intangible benefits include:

• Increased staff confidence and morale
• Greater transparency and credibility with stakeholders
• Improved credibility with regulators and lenders
• Stronger organizational resilience
• Increased customer and stakeholder satisfaction and reputation

For Caribbean ports navigating climate risk, tourism growth, and fiscal constraints, these benefits are not theoretical. They are operationally critical. []

FIRST PUBLISHED: April 20, 2026

* Helga Sommer, with more than 27 years of engineering experience in public and private sectors, currently (2026) 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. Helga.sommer@miamidade.gov

** 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. rolferikstromberg@gmail.com.