Sit in on any utility planning meeting and you’ll see the same challenge: project delivery dominates the agenda, while asset management fights for attention.

Christian Nolden, our USA President says it’s time to rethink our approach to asset ownership.  

It’s not that delivering projects is wrong – every utility needs to renew, rebuild, and expand. The problem is that our systems, incentives, and conversations treat project work and asset management as separate pursuits. When project success becomes the measure of progress, the long-term health of the network quietly takes a back seat.

The truth is, the industry’s greatest risk doesn’t come from storms, labor shortages, or supply-chain delays - it comes from how we think about our own work. We’ve built a culture around completion, not continuity. And as power generation and consumption shift rapidly, placing more strain on our already aging infrastructure, that short-term mindset has become untenable.

Asset management offers a way out, but only if it starts at the drawing board. ‍

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THE FALSE DIVIDE BETWEEN DESIGN AND OPERATIONS

Asset management is often described as a ‘wheel’ with a circular progress through planning, design, build, operate, maintain and replace. Yet in practice, the wheel is broken in two. Design and construction operate in one world; operations and maintenance live in another.

The early phases (strategy, design and build) might take five or ten years. Operations and maintenance stretch for 50 to 75 years. That’s where value truly lives. But most innovation and investment still happen at the front end. Once a project is “done,” those who built it rarely look back.

This divide creates a system that rewards new capital projects while undervaluing stewardship of existing ones. Utilities often minimize operating expenditure because it can’t be capitalized, which creates a structural bias toward replacement instead of renewal.

I think if we are to build sustainable, reliable networks, we need to bridge that gap. The answer lies in reclaiming design as the first act of asset stewardship. ‍

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DESIGN AS THE FIRST ACT OF ASSET STEWARDSHIP

Design is not the start of a project; it’s the beginning of an asset’s life. Every design decision shapes how that asset will live, perform, and eventually retire. Material choices, standards, and configurations determine the future inspection cycles, maintenance tasks, and replacement timelines.

Industry studies consistently show that design decisions lock in more than 70 percent of an asset’s lifetime cost, making design the most powerful opportunity for stewardship ⁽¹⁾.

Good design anticipates the needs of the future stewards. It ensures that assets can be inspected, tested, and maintained safely and efficiently throughout their life. It provides clarity about where to look, how often to look, and what “good” looks like when you get there. These are not afterthoughts; they’re fundamental design requirements.

This mindset shift of seeing every drawing and specification as a commitment to those who will inherit the asset, turns design into the most powerful risk-management tool utilities have. ‍

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STEWARDSHIP OVER THE LIFECYCLE

Stewardship doesn’t end at commissioning; it continues through every inspection, every modification, and every data point collected along the way. The best utilities create feedback loops between operations and design, using field data and performance history to refine future standards. A pole that corrodes faster than expected or a foundation that settles unevenly should immediately inform the next design iteration.

Equally important is preserving the story of the asset itself.  

That means every structure should begin life with a clear set of records - drawings, test results, material data, and QA/QC documentation. These information sets don’t need to be digital twins; they simply need to capture the asset’s condition and design intent so future teams can manage it intelligently.

This is the essence of stewardship: designing not just for performance today, but for understanding tomorrow.

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‍MAKING THE ECONOMICS WORK

In many regulated markets, the focus on capital expenditure over operating expenditure has reinforced short-term thinking. The UK’s Totex model offers a compelling counterpoint. By treating total expenditure (CapEx and OpEx combined) as a single measure, regulators reward utilities for the most efficient long-term solution rather than the largest capital program⁽²⁾. The result is lifecycle-based decision-making that values performance and reliability over spend.

U.S. utilities can learn from this approach even within existing frameworks. Studies in the utility and industrial sectors consistently show that integrating lifecycle asset management into design delivers substantial savings - often 15–25% lower total cost of ownership over 30 years ^{(3, 4).}

In the oil and gas industry, reliability-centered design, an extension of reliability-centered maintenance, is routinely applied during engineering to minimize unplanned outages and extend asset life.

Whether in a refinery, a power plant, or a transmission corridor, the lesson is the same: the cheapest design rarely produces the lowest lifetime cost. ‍

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THE KNOWLEDGE GAP WE CAN'T IGNORE

The loss of institutional knowledge adds urgency. Many of the engineers who intuitively understood how long assets really last, what early warning signs to watch for, and when to repair rather than replace, are retiring. Their replacements often have less exposure to the full lifecycle.

To sustain stewardship, we must institutionalize what was once instinctive: capturing design intent, documenting inspection triggers, and passing down lessons learned. Training the next generation of asset managers to think like stewards, not just operators, will be essential to maintaining reliability in an era of transition.‍

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A CALL TO DESIGN DIFFERENTLY

Utilities don’t need new technology to change this, just new thinking.  

When design, operations, and asset management act as one continuous process, we move from delivering projects to cultivating assets.

At Groundline Engineering, we see this as the next evolution of our discipline: design for asset stewardship. It should stand alongside design for manufacturing or design for safety as a professional standard.

A structure’s future failures are often determined at the design table. Designing with the end in mind isn’t just good engineering - it’s the only sustainable way to build the resilient, future-ready networks our communities depend on.

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1. ‍ASCE Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Report: https://www.asce.org/-/media/asce-images-and-files/advocacy/documents/asce-eno-life-cycle-report.pdf
2. Advanced Energy United Totex Overview: https://blog.advancedenergyunited.org/uk-riio-sets-out-to-demonstrate-how-a-performance-based-regulatory-model-can-deliver-value  
3. U.S. Department of Energy Life-Cycle Costing Guidelines: https://www.energy.gov/femp/life-cycle-cost-analysis
4. Ofwat Totex Outcomes Report: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ofwat_totexoutcomes_FINAL_30012019.pdf ‍

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If you’d like to talk with someone about what this shift might mean for your utility, get in touch with our team.

https://www.groundlineengineering.com/us/contact