Dr Penny Burns has announced her retirement.
Dr Burns has made a towering contribution to how infrastructure is managed worldwide in a career spanning over forty years. She introduced game playing to infrastructure priority setting in 1988, setting the rules as:
1. Clarify your objectives
2. Take the annual asset consumption cost (between 1.5% and 4%) into account in your plans.
3. As assets age, acknowledge that the cost of replacement falling due will rise.
4. Involve the managers of the assets in planning and decision-making if you want responsible plans.
5. Emphasise the worth of the asset, the services it provides, not its financing procedures.
6. Account for all the costs of managing infrastructure, including those owing but not yet paid.
She questioned the two principal objectives for increasing the stock of infrastructure: employment generation and income generation.
Penny had introduced the idea of calculating the full cost of water and waste water services to the South Australian water authority in 1984. The South Australian Parliament saw the benefit of her approach and asked her to advise the Public Accounts Committee, in which role she established a method to estimate the cost and timing of future infrastructure renewal.
The PAC tabled her two-year study estimating the cost and timing of future infrastructure renewal in the South Australian Parliament.
The questions Penny raised then reverberated across Australia, among managers of state entities and local governments. The benefits of considering the questions she raised meant she was much sought after. In 1989 the Minister of Construction, Resources and Energy in Tasmania snared her to be his Special Adviser. She guided the Minister through the many changes taking place: in accounting, finance, regulation and administration as well as asset management.
Penny trained as an economist, and worked well the engineers. Delving into their world she developed the discipline of asset management. See her book “The Story of Asset Management“. Her key message is: “Infrastructure, we can afford to buy it, can we afford to keep it?”
By 1994, Treasuries and State Agencies had started asking Penny’s help in answering questions being asked of them by their Parliaments on how they are planning to renew ageing infrastructure.
Penny learnt as she went, and shared what she was learning with these agencies of government. She created a policy, principles and practice newsletter. Initially, it was published quarterly, but quickly became the fortnightly, multi-disciplinary “Strategic Asset Management” (SAM). Readers included accountants, auditors, architects, lawyers, urban planners and politicians as well as engineers.
In 1996, the UK Central Government invited her to advise it on lessons Australia had learned about managing assets. Her paper detailing these lessons was circulated to all councils in England and Wales. It guided the UK in its introduction of asset management.
Penny has spent years consulting with governments, engineers, accountant, auditors and others with some responsibility for planning and managing infrastructure. She led a course through K McGovern & Associates on “Auditing Asset Management” for the Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions in 2016. She has been an associate of our firm for over ten years, and has guided our work on Infrastructure Planning for Pacific Island Countries.
By 2024 Penny had been identifying and helping to solve the problems of managing infrastructure for forty years. Last year, she toured Australia, visiting Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and the Blue Mountains to bring to her audience problems that are not yet being addressed. “We can afford to build infrastructure, but is it fit for the likely future of the state, and can we afford to operate it and maintain it?”
While she is no longer committed to deadlines and organisational matters, Penny’s contribution to the management of assets, most particularly of infrastructure assets, continues. She is developing “Penny’s Place”, a website that will record all 400 issues of SAM as well as her other writings. She’ll remain a sounding board for our work.
Wishing Dr Burns a very enjoyable retirement.