The art and value of managing asset resilience

While the ribbon-cutting of a new bridge or the breakthrough of a tunnel boring machine often grabs headlines, it’s the quiet, continuous work behind the scenes that truly determines an asset’s legacy and longevity. Maintenance, the unsung hero of infrastructure resilience, is crucial in ensuring Australia’s built environment stands strong for decades to come. But it’s often overlooked and undervalued. 

In Create Digital’s latest feature, Charlie Jewkes, WSP in Australia’s Managing Director of Water, Power & Energy, reinforces this perspective. He argues that resilience is not only about how we build; it’s also about how we maintain.

“Maintenance is the frontline of resilience,” says Charlie, advocating for predictive strategies that anticipate disruption before it strikes. 

So, what does this mean for water?

This thinking is central to WSP’s approach across the water sector. As utilities face rising demand from population growth, industrial expansion, and climate change, it’s critical to shift from reactive fixes to proactive, tech-enabled solutions to embed resilience into everyday water infrastructure operations.

Yet despite its vital role, maintenance of water assets is often misunderstood and seen as a cost rather than a capability. Charlie adds that the value of maintenance is frequently under-communicated, with the scale of the maintenance challenge in Australia being such that many engineers may struggle to articulate the value of investment.

“That represents a challenge for engineers in every infrastructure sector, including water. Maintenance is very unsexy stuff in the public realm, which can make things difficult.”

Adhoc to hi-tech: Lessons from energy 

Much of Australia’s infrastructure is ageing, and maintaining these assets should not be a matter of if, but when and how. As Charlie points out, the water industry is often reactive and relies on traditional maintenance methods which involve manual inspections and repairs on an as needed basis. This is not only unsustainable; it is largely expensive and inefficient.

“On the one hand, Australia has some very old and well-established infrastructure,” Charlie says. “In the water industry, we have pipes, reservoirs and pump stations that are 100 or more years old in some areas. And, unfortunately, we often still take a very traditional approach to maintenance when addressing leaking pipes, cracks on the face of dams or rusting pump stations.”

On the other hand, Australia also has new wind, solar and battery systems technology coming online, “developing somewhere between quite quickly to incredibly quickly”.

“There’s quite an industry emerging in the maintenance of wind turbine blades. This involves repairing little divots, reforming the ageing blades – effectively sharpening them, if you want to use that analogy – to improve their aerodynamics. There are all sorts of specialist products and services coming online.”

For example, the lifespan of an aging wind farm in Canunda, South Australia that was commissioned in 2005 has been extended for 10 more years until 2035 after Engie and Vestas reassessed its serviceability. 

“That’s an additional 10 years of high-value energy generation. So, the original investment case is probably looking at least 50 per cent better, as it is still operating well within its serviceability parameters,” Charlie concludes.

Read the full article here: Maintenance matters