3.4.3.3 Advanced

Organizations at this stage of maturity have successfully incorporated asset management into their corporate culture and are immersed in a continuous improvement process. In this context, they investigate further actions to enhance the efficacy and efficiency of their business practices.

One of these actions is the implementation of a cross-asset schema for budget allocation, which broadens the scope of project selection and prioritization to ensure that projects that best contribute to the organization’s mission are adequately funded, regardless of the asset class or operational feature each project is related to. A prerequisite for an organization to implement cross-asset resource allocation procedures is the existence of a suitable organizational structure for allowing the steady flow of information that might be required.

Cross-asset methods are still at an early stage of development worldwide. In this regard, risk-based approaches have also proven useful for organizations already engaged in adopting such methods.

Advanced works programming is closely linked to asset management financial planning. On the one hand, financial planning takes as input information regarding historical funding levels and the amount of funds expected to be available in the foreseeable future (FHWA 2013). On the other hand, it defines how these funds will be allocated in the short to medium term.