Course fee

$2,078 for both courses 

Please note: Student loans are not available for short courses and night classes.

Start date

Although this course starts on Wednesday 28 February, later enrolments may be accepted depending on your experience in the Asset Management field.

Orientation to courses 22 February 2024, 5:30pm - 7:45pm. 

About the course

This is our fourth year of this fully facilitated live online delivery course which is made up of two courses from our Bachelor of Engineering Technology (Asset Management Apprenticeship Pathway)

• Introduction to Asset Management
• Asset Management Planning 

It's delivered via Microsoft Teams every Wednesday evening from 5.30pm-7.45pm and has assessments based in your workplace. 

Alongside industry experts, we’ve developed these courses to create a pathway into infrastructure management for people from diverse backgrounds. Our aim is to ensure that asset management learning is future-proofed so that multi-disciplinary teams can work effectively together, addressing skills gaps and solving ever more complex societal problems. 

Taught by subject matter experts currently engaged in the industry, these courses will give you the skills and knowledge to become a competent member of an asset management team. You’ll know how registers and plans are developed and will be capable of contributing significantly to the development of these, you’ll appreciate your relationship with the overall system of asset management, and will understand the analytical, engagement and data sourcing activities needed of you. 

For those who already have asset management experience, these courses will enable you to hone and deepen your abilities. 

Course content is work-based and assessments are focused on producing two significant pieces of work throughout the year (an asset register and an asset management plan). These pieces of work will benefit you and your employer. 

Why are both courses offered together?

The course content of Introduction to Asset Management and Asset Management Planning includes several areas of crossover which means it makes sense for them both to be offered at the same time.

This allows us to make the most of industry expertise and for you to complete two significant pieces of work over a nine-month period; the development of an asset register and supporting information for the Introductory course, and the development of a comprehensive asset management plan for the Asset Management course.

These pieces of work will benefit you and your employer. 

Who you’ll be taught by

This course is delivered by subject matter experts who are working in the industry – meaning you get the most up-to-date knowledge and practices. 

Learner feedback on this delivery style in the past has been overwhelmingly positive and many felt like it enhanced the quality of their final assessments/projects. 

How your learning environment is set up

Once you are enrolled, you will be given pre-learning materials to kickstart you and support your success in this course.

You will also receive a student email account and be enrolled in our online learning platform called Moodle (you’ll get instructions about how to use Moodle). 

Online sessions for both courses will be run on Wednesdays from 5.30pm-7.45pm through Microsoft Teams. We’ll send you a calendar invite through your student email to these Teams sessions. 

To be able to fully utilise the Teams environment, please use your student email link as this will give you all the live chat and functionality you need. 

All Teams sessions will be set to automatically record from 5.15pm-7.45pm and the recording will be made available via the Teams group for anyone who missed the session, however sessions held in breakout rooms are not able to be recorded and it is advised that your attendance is consistent for each session. 

Please ensure that you have the audio and visual capability to access these sessions properly as there’ll be activities where you’ll need to feed into conversations with others. 

The learning leader will also set up individual Teams meeting with each participant during the first few weeks of the course to ensure they have a good understanding of your learning needs, and any work or personal challenges you may be facing that could impact on your learning.

How you’ll learn

Your online sessions on a Wednesday will follow this format:

• The facilitator will open and manage the logistics of each session.
• Industry experts will deliver learning about their specific area of expertise.
• 'Breakout room' group exercises are run where you discuss the session and complete relevant activities in smaller teams and feedback their findings to the greater group.
• Discussions are held with the whole group to look at individuals own context and environments.

For both courses, there are also self-directed learning tasks that must be completed.

What you will learn

• ISO standards and legislation
• Definition of asset management; benefits of asset management; the asset management system
• Defining levels of service for infrastructure assets, including, but not limited to customer value, customer communication, decision-making, delivering value; performance measures and targets; identification of level of service gaps.
  • Acceptable levels of service
• Essential asset attributes; data storage; data structures; performance and condition data; condition rating systems; performance rating systems
  • Configuration, capacity, asset parameters and functionality
  • Condition assessments
• Demand management practices for infrastructure assets, including, but not limited to: consideration of current use, timeframe, future use, intervention strategies, valuation of options, acceptability, stakeholder response, corporate strategies, future capital works programme, demographics.
  • Trends and mega trends.
• Optimised decision-making process for infrastructure asset system management.
  • Creation and evaluation of criteria to assist decision making.
  • Reporting, documenting, recording of determination.
  • Asset lifespan: Use, Maintenance, Targets, limits
    • Modelling of current and forecasting future states
    • Options for addressing problems and opportunities including, but not limited to; do nothing, maintain, rehabilitate, replace, upgrade, non-asset solution or solutions.
    • Cost/benefit analysis of options in terms of: Financial, Environmental, Social, Cultural implications.

• Renewal forecasting (extrapolation, age / remaining life estimates, condition-based renewal forecasts.

• Resilience: Management of change
  • Emergency management planning
  • Criticality, vulnerabilities, and interdependencies,
  • Risk rating
  • Climate change; strategies and responsibilities
• Facilities and Soft Asset management
• Maintenance contract management
• New asset commissioning
• Audit and improvement
• Maturity assessments

Assessments

To be assessed for these courses, you’ll need access to a set of assets you can work with to compile your asset register and asset management plan. This will benefit your organisation too so the focus on the workplace-based learning component is strong. 

The assets you work on are completely your choice (work, personal, non-profit groups, sporting groups, etc). We may also work with a hypothetical city in our exercises and the asset group from this may be used for your register and plans if required.

You will also complete a directed course of study on the learning platform Moodle that will take you about 40 hours to complete alongside the learning you will undertake each week, these tasks will also contribute towards your assessment outcomes.

If current processes are already in place at your place of work, the assessments may focus on you completing a comprehensive review and update of current registers/plans. This would involve considerable reflective practice that you would need to evidence. Alternatively, there may be an additional tier of assessments incorporated into existing plans. This will be discussed once you enrol and have a clearer picture of how the assessments may work effectively for you in conjunction with the course coordinator. 

You’ll achieve a Level 6 Certificate of Practice upon completion of these courses. 

Your workload

Each course requires 150 hours of learning (so if you’re completing both courses, you’ll need to spend 300 hours on your study). 

Industry expertise in the delivery of these courses

These courses are delivered by a subject matter expert pool of 30 experienced asset managers across a broad range of backgrounds and industries.  Most of these people have learned their craft through experience in the field, as formal learning was not available until recent years.  They are pleased to help develop the future asset management professionals and look forward to watching your careers and experience grow.  The opportunity to develop some excellent connections within Asset Management circles is a welcome outcome for learnings on this course.  Previous learners of these courses will share their work with you and provide insights on how to approach the assessments, the learning they have gains and the opportunities that have opened doors for them.

Industry partner for best practice in New Zealand

Āpōpō is the industry recognised public infrastructure asset management body in New Zealand we are working with in relation to the programme of learning and provision of resources for learners to support their study:  https://apopo.co.nz/.  The Āpōpō Guide; all learners will have free access to as part of their enrolment into the course and is a key supporting resource that is used for these courses.

Learners may wish to consider completing the Āpōpō digital badge:  AO101 Introduction to Te Ao Māori in advance of this course.

Who to contact

For more information and pre application assessment

Sarah.hexamer@op.ac.nz
Asset Management Courses Coordinator/Senior Lecturer.
Ph: 027 539 0193. 

Please note

If your Asset Management experience is limited, these two courses are taught at a level to meet all levels of experience. However, learners may wish to complete other digital badges within the suite of AM badges from Āpōpō to provide a basic level of understanding into Asset Management.

If you are wanting to complete the Graduate Diploma in Asset Management once it launches in 2024, please discuss this with Sarah Hexamer.