Why there is no such thing as maintenance backlog

The premise is that traditional approaches to (historic) maintenance expenditure backlog are not useful as a mechanism to provide the evidence necessary to balance cost, risk and performance. Hence, maintenance “backlog” is not relevant to support long term sustainable decision making for a government’s asset portfolio. This paper will outline a more effective approach to prospectively identify the optimal asset maintenance regime and expenditure required with consideration to risk and improve how public sector organisations can respond to the growing future challenges they face, including fiscal constraints, aging profile of existing assets, impacts of population growth, demands for higher quality or changing service needs and response to climate change impacts.