Asset Management

BEM’s Asset Management program was developed to assist public transit agencies and state DOTs with compliance with the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Transit Asset Management (TAM) requirements, in accordance with 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Parts 625 and 630 (TAM Final Rule) and MAP-21, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-159). The TAM Final Rule requires that transit agencies report their asset inventory, state of good repair (SGR), and investment plans for four asset categories: facilities, rolling stock, infrastructure, and equipment. The reporting will be used to justify future transportation funding from the federal government.

BEM’s approach to asset management combines collection of asset condition data with tools to effectively and efficiently evaluate data analytics to make key decisions that optimize use of funds to get the best return on investment with respect to FTA and FHWA requirements and guidelines. Compliance with FTA and FHWA has direct and substantial impact on future funding from these agencies and is therefore critical to agency operations.

Based on several data sources (most notably Insurance tables, Building Inspection Reports, and NTD tables), an asset inventory for commuter rail passenger facilities was cataloged in a centralized database. A methodology was selected to calculate the overall station SGR of rail stations. This same methodology will be modified and applied to all facilities.

The database was developed as a decision support tool to centralize the data required for TAM reporting. This database currently includes data for commuter rail stations and will be expanded to include all facility data and other analytics to assist in investment decisions.

To prioritize investments to increase the SGR of commuter rail stations, the following factors are specifically required in the final FTA rule: SGR, safety, ADA compliance, ridership, vulnerability to flooding, and energy intensity. SGR, safety, and ADA compliance. Ridership is included to assist in prioritization. The final FTA rule does not formally require transit providers to perform a climate resilience analysis as part of the TAM, although it was in the FTA’s draft TAM rule it is a recognized factor since Superstorm Sandy. Additionally, sustainability is considered.

The web-based TAM system was designed to incorporate a standard SGR data model drawing from transit asset data sources. The core data hierarchy structure is sufficiently generic to handle a wide variety of assets within a typical transit agency, starting with Category, then Asset Class, Asset, and Asset Sub-Element.

The application uses this design to store data for four main asset categories, namely rolling stock, facilities, infrastructure, and equipment.  Within each category, detailed SGR data can be collected and stored. At any point in time, the web-based system allows users to view both the detailed SGR data as well as a composite SGR rating for each asset, asset class, and category. The composite SGR ratings are automatically computed using a methodology that weights individual components based on inputs provided by transit operating groups and directives/guidance provided by the USDOT.

Users can use analytical capabilities within the software to drill into the ratings to identify components that are responsible for low SGR scores based on standard TERM scoring.

Decision support is provided to assist with prioritization of asset maintenance and replacement expenses based on the previously identified priority components of SGR, safety, ADA-compliance, ridership, flood, and sustainability. The weighting of each component, as well as the weighting of each individual sub-component, can be adjusted to keep the prioritization score as relevant as possible to the needs of the agency. Upon changing the scoring weights, the system automatically updates current and past scores to evaluate the effect of the new scoring formula.

The system also provides extensive capabilities to perform analytics on the data sets. Users can work with the analytics dashboard to focus in on areas of interest in the dataset, such as to find components with low scores, and can further filter them based on other attributes such as the components of the prioritization scoring described above. Users can readily assess the number of facilities with high ridership that have safety issues, for example.

One of the key requirements of the asset management process is the collection of detailed SGR data for every Transit asset defined in the TAMP. Historically, this process was completed on paper forms that were inconsistent as well as difficult to manage and consolidate. BEM reviewed the data collection process and developed a mobile app with the following key features:

• Collects SGR data for multiple categories and types of components
• Auto-populates data fields with valid values based on options selected by inspectors
• Creates GPS maps of photos using coordinates provided by the mobile device for each rated component
• Easily synchronizes with a centralized database and primary data analytics web site
• Provides the ability to function both offline and when connected

The Asset Management mobile app provides capabilities that also address requirements for the DelDOT ROW system.  As shown in the screen captures below, users can create data forms in the field, populate them with data observations that include dates, text, yes/no selections, pictures, and user signatures taken by the device.  These forms are then sent to the central server when the user identifies them as complete.  Once on the central server, the data are available from the website.

The combination of the mobile app with the centralized web site and TAM database provides a comprehensive capability to handle asset management for the NJ Transit agency.