How Asset Management Saves Infrastructure Costs

Sunday, 7 September 2025

It’s well known that timely investment in infrastructure maintenance reduces costs in the longer term. The UK Government’s Highways Maintenance Appraisal Tool estimated, in their summary published in 2015, that each extra £1 spent maintaining the national road network reduces direct and indirect costs by £2.70. Maximising these savings relies on identifying where and when to intervene. And that’s where asset management comes in.

Whereas maintenance is about fixing problems, asset management is about predicting them and planning timely interventions at least whole-of-life cost. Focused on prevention rather than cure, WSP’s asset management specialists help our clients devise strategies for anticipating the future condition of assets such as carriageways or bridges and develop interventions to keep them in service. This keeps costs down but also improves road safety and traffic flow.

For under-pressure local authorities, asset management is a balancing act. They must establish the economic, safety and reliability benefits of different interventions, balancing this with political and stakeholder pressures and the need to minimise environmental impact. By considering these factors together, they can make a case for investment.

UK Transport and Infrastructure

United Kingdom

Related themes and tags

Understanding the potential future condition of an asset gives you the vital information you need to demonstrate why and when investment is needed.

Mark Lewis Associate Consultant, Asset Management Advisory

Mark Lewis Associate Consultant, Asset Management Advisory

Take potholes, for example – a problem that gets a lot of media, political and public attention. The Asphalt Industry Alliance’s latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey puts the cost of filling the UK’s potholes at £16.81bn. Research like this helps build the case for investing in maintenance. It also highlights the benefit of investing better – because preventing potholes is cheaper, less disruptive to users, and delivers an improved level of service over the life of a carriageway.

Planning tools we’ve developed show that if local authorities could fund the delivery of the lifecycle asset management plans, they could halve the cost of maintenance. What’s more, a less reactive approach is often lower carbon.

Driving down long-term costs

Carefully planned and timed, preventative treatment such as waterproofing with surface dressing on carriageways can drive down the longer-term costs of managing highways assets and keep them in service for longer. We’re putting this approach into practice for local authorities across the country. For example, we worked with Via East Midlands to devise strategies for 14 core assets in Nottinghamshire, helping plan interventions using asset management principles.

But initiating and embedding asset management principles takes time and effort. This is particularly true when backlogs of maintenance work are spiralling, and opinions – both public and political – are divided on what should be prioritised. Add in stakeholders who expect an instant response from your overstretched team, and it can be hard to know where to begin.

What’s required is a well-considered plan to steadily move away from reactive maintenance and towards asset management. Among the local authorities we’ve helped make this shift are Via East Midlands for Nottinghamshire County Council, West Sussex County Council and Herefordshire Council

When we help local authority clients devise and implement such a plan, we consider the unique qualities of the local area – its topography, weather, political priorities and community activity. Factoring in climate resilience is crucial as infrastructure networks face increasingly severe weather conditions. And engaging stakeholders to understand their concerns and priorities enables us to devise asset management strategies that meet a wide range of needs.

People are a key factor in the asset management strategies we create with our clients. Alongside economic impact, it’s vital to factor in what stakeholders are interested in, what level of service they want and what they are willing to pay for it.

Graham Barrow Leader, Asset Management Advisory

Graham Barrow Leader, Asset Management Advisory

Considering all these factors means that the route to adopting asset management will look different from client to client, and from area to area. For example, a rural authority may choose to start with carriageways, which attract a lot of comment from councillors and their constituents, and for which highways departments often have good data. Whereas an urban authority may choose to focus on structures and begin by identifying the life-extending interventions that will keep them in service.

Making the case for funding

By developing an informed picture of the future condition of assets and the economic impact of intervening at the optimum time, highways departments can make their case for funding. We’ve seen firsthand through our work with local authorities just how powerful a clear illustration of the economic impact of asset management can be.

Adopting strong asset management principles also places local authorities in a prime position for securing government funding. The UK Government Department for Transport’s (DfT) Highways Maintenance Challenge Fund ran from 2015 to 2021 and required local authorities to submit business cases based on asset management. For the latest round of funding for maintenance, the DfT has announced it will introduce a new incentive element to ensure that best practice in sustainable highways asset management is followed.

Local government reform will further intensify the focus on asset management. For example, councils whose funding will flow through mayoral strategic authorities can use asset management to demonstrate their funding needs clearly.

As we look ahead over the long lifespans of our infrastructure assets, there will always be some uncertainty. But one thing is clear: long-term value comes from optimising how we operate and maintain our assets to deliver a service to society. And asset management holds the key to unlocking this value.

Asset Management

We assist our clients to define and manage their asset portfolio, in order to unlock, develop and sustain the true value of their assets. By strategically investing and managing their assets, they can enhance efficiency, manage risks and assure the desired outcomes.

Our capabilities

Local Government

At WSP we care about the issues facing local government and have a long track record of assisting our clients to successfully tackle the pressures facing them.

Our capabilities