Overview

The 2018/19 Government Policy Statement (GPS) sets an expectation of Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to ‘deliver the right infrastructure … at the best cost’ as part of the ‘value for money’ theme.

This calls for a more mature approach to whole-of-life asset and activity management, and greater consistency across the land transport sector. The continued development of individual solutions to common problems is inefficient. We need reliable and sharable information about land transport assets across their lifecycle to drive more informed investment decisions.

The Treasury’s National Infrastructure Plan also highlights the importance of the development of ‘national, shared, open data standards for infrastructure’. It is one of the key focus areas.

The 30 Year NZ Infrastructure Plan 2015(external link)

The Asset Management Data Standard (AMDS) project will develop and implement a national, shared data standard for land transport infrastructure assets.  It will be a way of defining and describing land transport assets, their attributes, characteristics, properties, location and performance to enable efficient and effective end-to-end life cycle asset management.

At the same time, other public infrastructure owners such as the water and broader utilities sector are also progressing their national, shared, open data standards. This means we need to work collaboratively to ensure the interdependencies are better understood and, where necessary, the data standards for similar land transport assets are aligned to give a joined-up view of public infrastructure.

Benefits of AMDS

The data standard for land transport assets will offer a consistent, integrated approach to data structures and asset management. It will enable better asset data acquisition and analytics, better management of land transport asset data and greater opportunities for sharing and collaboration.

This will help with forward work planning, strategic asset management and improved sector-wide investment decisions because of a richer, consistent, spatially-enabled evidence base.

Our vision is to share transport asset data within and between organisations easily, so decision makers can access and confidently use all relevant information wherever they are, whenever they want, whoever has provided it.

How the Data Standard is being developed

The success of the AMDS programme to develop and deliver a national, shared standard for roading asset management relies on a collaborative effort between Waka Kotahi, Road Efficiency Group (REG) and the wider local government and transport sectors.

Road Efficiency Group

The data standard is designed to be simple, extensible, future-proofed and technology software system-neutral. We are taking an iterative and consultative approach to development and implementation to ensure the standard is robust and fit-for-purpose.

Waka Kotahi is engaging extensively with the sector to fully test the data standard before implementing it nationally. We are seeking feedback from road maintenance providers, New Zealand road controlling authorities, data system developers and solution providers, and anyone with an interest in the development and implementation of the standard.

There will be four minor releases to socialise the standard. These are intended to measure suitability for use, aid discussion, gather feedback, gauge impact, provide visibility to AMS providers and early adopters, and enable early prototyping.

There are approximately 20 asset types – further new asset types will be delivered in each release, along with an environmental lens and changes or additional information from feedback on the previous release.

The release of the completed Data Standard document and Technical Specification guidance document will publish the standard for adoption by the sector and implementation at road controlling authorities (including Waka Kotahi), maintenance contractors and AMS providers.

The AMDS will be published in two parts:

1. AMDS Standard (textual)
2. AMDS Technical Specifications (data models/schema).

The technical specifications, asset definitions and contextual data for the following asset types are the first of four modules released for feedback over the next 10 months:

1. Pavement and surfacing
2. Poles and gantries – device supporting structures
3. Signs – as an example of a device
4. Barriers.

Project scope

The AMDS project scope includes:

• developing a national asset management data standard for land transport infrastructure assets that includes location and geospatial standards
• supporting the sector to implement the national asset management data standard
• providing ongoing monitoring and management post-project with a business as usual (BAU) model.

Work programme and timeline

Following Investment Logic workshops, an initial business case was developed in 2018 with participation from the sector – the councils, contractors and technical consultants. An Indicative Business Case has now been completed.

The timeline for this work is: