ASSET MANAGER DAVID BERGER, P.ENG.
HOW TO MANAGE LAND WITH YOUR CMMS Keep track of who’s doing what where on the property occupied by your plant Land is a physical asset that must be managed like any
other asset. So which technologies are your best options for land management? You have a few options. Specialized software applications that support land acquisition and management exist, but these applications are typically standalone. Alternatively, a geographical information system (GIS) can be used to provide a geospatial representation of land parcels and the assets on them. However, a GIS is not hierarchical and is not designed to manage transactions such as projects, work orders, and so on. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is helpful in managing some transactions, such as lease payments, land-related document control, and contacts made with landowners, but it may not be fully integrated with other functions. Given that land is essentially a linear asset, perhaps what works best is a fully integrated land management solution with a CMMS as the core application for managing land parcels, landowners, and other stakeholders, as well as work order control, project management, contact management, financial management, and integration with GIS. These functions are discussed below. The capability and level of sophistication of your CMMS will dictate how much integration is necessary with specialized land management, ERP, and other systems.
LAND PARCEL MANAGEMENT
Central to a land management system (LMS) is a land asset registry to record key information about land parcels (identification number, land type, location information, appraisal value, document reference numbers, etc.). Depending on how sophisticated your CMMS is, this will be accommodated through the CMMS asset register and/or integration with specialty LMS and GIS software. The location information you’ll need to maintain will depend on the local jurisdiction but may include lot and plan numbers, a Crown description, a survey or map reference, roadway intersections, GPS coordinates, and latitude and longitude coordinates. Depending on the land parcel’s shape, multiple coordinates can reference the outer limits or corners of the property, or one set of coordinates can represent the centroid. There may be multiple assets on the land that require referencing, such as trees, bridges, signs, walkways, furniture, structures, and/or facilities. These assets may or may
not be registered as separate assets, depending on the level of granularity required for tracking work history. Another key feature of the land parcel asset registry is the ability to maintain active and inactive records. For example, if a parcel of land is split or two parcels are combined, both the old and new reference information and history should be maintained with appropriate cross-referencing. This requirement is similar to that of all linear assets, such as water
YOUR CMMS WORK MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONALITY MOST LIKELY CAN PLAN AND TRACK ALL PERMITTING AND MAINTENANCE WORK DONE ON THE LAND. mains that are split, abandoned, replaced, or combined. Thus, each land parcel should have a status and corresponding “from/to” dates (also known as “since/until” dates) to keep more accurate records of land parcel history. STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Every land parcel has one or more stakeholders – the landowner, property manager, tenants and/or contractors – who will be referenced As with the land parcel, each stakeholder status should have a “from” and “to” reference date to keep track of active and inactive stakeholders. Stakeholder name and contact information will be included, and it’s critical that the software accommodate multiple address, email, and phone number fields, as many stakeholders have multiple addresses or phone numbers. Each stakeholder must be cross-referenced to one or more land parcels. Contracts and other documents as well as notes about preferred method of payment or correspondence may be included for a given stakeholder in the records, too. Your CMMS may be able to record stakeholder information through use of the supplier master or through integration with a specialty LMS and/or ERP package. WORK & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Your CMMS work management functionality most likely can plan and track all permitting and maintenance work done on the land parcel itself (e.g., grass-cutting) or work done on individual assets on the land (e.g., replacing a wind WWW.PLANTSERVICES.COM DECEMBER 2016 13