A comparison of asset valuation methods for civil infrastructure

Highway networks generally represent the largest asset of public infrastructure. Management of the performance of this asset through timely rehabilitation and/or maintenance is well understood, however, less is known about how to manage the value within the context of public-private partnerships or other delivery models. The recent trend to privatization coupled with a new requirement to report tangible capital assets on annual government statements has focused the need for an understanding of the impact of valuation method and performance prediction models on network asset valuation. Asset valuation holds great promise as a readily understood (to the public and private sector) performance measure and, as an asset management integration mechanism for trade-off analysis between competing components (pavement, bridges etc.). However, uncertainty within the valuation method and a lack of understanding of the performance basis for valuation has created barriers to acceptance of performance based valuation by the financial community. The paper describes the role of asset valuation within asset management, followed by a comparison of asset valuation methods and application. Using the City of Edmonton pavement database as a case, the network asset valuation is calculated for five valuation methods to gain an understanding of the variation between methods and as such the impact of selecting one approach over another. Uncertainty is investigated through the use of Monte Carlo simulation to calculate asset value using probability distributions for key variables in the calculations.