The City owns and manages a variety of different assets. It is important to know what a municipality owns.
Find out how strategy is used to inform decision-making and efficiently manage and maintain infrastructure.
Municipal Infrastructure Assets
Municipal infrastructure is the backbone of everyday life in a city. It’s the road we use to get from home to work. It’s the buildings where we go for recreation. It’s the systems used to dispose of waste. It’s how we care for our heritage treasures and position emergency services to protect life, property and the environment.
The Strategy
Infrastructure is essential to Edmonton residents and businesses. It is critical to the competitiveness of our economy, vital for our quality of life and crucial for delivering public services. The ability to build and maintain infrastructure ensures Edmonton can provide services while remaining an attractive and cost-effective place to live and do business.
The City of Edmonton Infrastructure Strategy is a plan to manage these assets. This plan relies on innovative tools for infrastructure asset management. The goal is to maintain infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population. This is achieved through informed decision-making and efficient resource use.
The City’s infrastructure is aging. It needs more maintenance and renewal to maintain and meet residents’ needs. Edmonton is also a growing city and needs new infrastructure to support its growth.
The City uses asset management best practices to help manage its infrastructure. The goal is to achieve the best possible balance between infrastructure renewal and growth.
Strategic Asset Management Plan
Edmonton was one of the first cities in Canada to recognize the importance of a plan to manage its infrastructure. The City developed an infrastructure strategy to help Council and City administration make sound asset management decisions. The strategy's goal is to ensure that Edmonton's infrastructure is in good condition and can support the needs of a growing population, now and in the future.
History of the Strategy
The City is on its third infrastructure strategy. In 1998, the first infrastructure strategy had 15 guiding principles and supportive strategies. In 2006, the City of Edmonton Office of Infrastructure updated the original infrastructure strategy by creating Edmonton City Council’s Infrastructure Strategy. It sought to balance the renewal needs of existing infrastructure with the growth and expansion pressures faced by the City. This strategy supported the development of effective infrastructure management tools. It recognized the need for collaboration among engineers, academia, financial services, industry, residents, other orders of government, and other stakeholders.
In 2018, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Leadership in Asset Management Program assisted in updating the City Infrastructure Strategy. The updated strategy aligned with Council’s vision for both the city and corporate strategic plans. The strategy also created standards for the City and set out the mandate for asset management processes.
Asset management and sustainability integration enhance the connection between investment decisions, service commitments, and sustainable outcomes for communities. Edmonton has always aimed to create a sound asset management system in all versions of the Infrastructure Strategy. An asset management system should be effective, data-based and transparent. It should connect asset investment with progress toward strategic goals and service-level outcomes.
How are Municipal Assets Managed?
Infrastructure assets are the physical assets developed and used by a municipality to provide services and economic activities. Without the services, there is no need for infrastructure. This infrastructure hierarchy table lists and describes the types of assets owned and managed by the City. The City’s asset inventory is diverse. It includes roads, parks, buildings, fleet vehicles, traffic control, recreation facilities, computer networks, affordable housing, libraries and more.
There are fundamental questions in asset management; while the data needed to answer these questions is extensive, the concept of what we need to know is not.
Fundamental Questions
What Do We Own?
What is it Worth?
If an asset failed today, what would it cost to replace it? This value is key as it provides an order of magnitude to help understand the value of the City’s assets.
What is the State and Condition?
The City uses a standardized 5-point rating system on a scale of A to F (Very Good to Very Poor) to grade asset state and condition.
What is the Average Age of our Infrastructure?
In managing assets, we need to know how many more years we can expect the asset to last. Generally speaking, the older the asset, the more reinvestment is required to keep the asset functioning safely.
What Will it Cost to Bring the Asset Back to an Acceptable Condition?
Many tools are used to identify assets that need reinvestment and possibly funding strategies. An acceptable condition does not necessarily mean returning the asset to a new condition; it means a condition that allows the asset to do what it needs to operate safely.
We can judge how effective capital investment decisions have been by assessing and analyzing the City's infrastructure inventory. This analysis then gives reasoning for key budget decisions.
Determining Investment Need
The City's 10-year Capital Investment Outlook (2023-2032) was developed through a collaboration with all City departments; it identified capital needs and priorities for growth projects and determined the investment targets for renewal.
The Capital Investment Outlook provides a long-term view of Edmonton’s infrastructure needs, which helps City Council understand the impacts of their decisions. It helps to see how these choices affect the City’s future capital investment needs. It also enables Council to make short-term decisions based on this long-term view.
The Capital Investment Outlook is essential for achieving ConnectEdmonton, the City’s strategic plan. Approved by City Council in 2019, ConnectEdmonton helps set the direction for Edmonton’s future. It’s about transformational change and recognizes the city’s heart is its people.
The City Plan outlines how we will get to a future city with the benefits we enjoy today and new opportunities for the future. The City Plan is about our spaces and places and how we move around the city. It is about our community and what we must do together to grow, adapt and succeed.
The City’s 10-year Capital Investment Outlook and the City’s 4 year Capital Budget guide City Council in allocating City resources to build and maintain the infrastructure Edmontonians will rely upon in the future.
Funding Programs
Grant programs help the City provide the infrastructure needed to support its services. The federal and provincial governments provide grant funding to municipalities for infrastructure projects. This funding helps Edmonton move forward on projects that would have otherwise been delayed due to a lack of funds.
Grant management helps align the priorities in the City's 10-year Capital Outlook to ensure that the selected projects meet the grant funding program’s criteria. The criteria for eligibility may impact project priority, and some grant programs have restrictions, such as spending limits or matching criteria. This means that some projects may receive funding which would not have been available otherwise. However, not all expenses are eligible under a grant program, and a municipality may need additional funding to move forward with the project.
Grant funding availability doesn’t directly decide what the City renews or builds, but these decisions can be influenced by available grant funding.
Growth Needs
Developers pay the construction costs for the infrastructure needed to support new neighbourhoods, such as stormwater ponds or sewer trunk lines. They recover these costs by selling housing lots. After 1 to 2 years of infrastructure maintenance, the City is responsible for this infrastructure’s maintenance.
The City provides services such as transit, police, fire rescue, roads, waste collection, parks, libraries, and recreation services. This requires investment in operations and maintenance, service delivery, and asset renewal and replacement. When existing infrastructure can no longer accommodate new homes, commercial buildings, or people, reinvestment is required to upgrade existing infrastructure or add new assets.
Changing land use impacts an asset's functionality and demand/capacity. The City reinvests in infrastructure to add functionality that may not have been needed when the asset was originally built.
Contact Us
Lifecycle Management
12th Floor, Edmonton Tower
10111 104 Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 0J4
| infrastructure@edmonton.ca |