Asset Management and Capital Improvement Planning

Aging infrastructure, including roads, buildings and bridges, competing priorities, limited budgets. These are some of the challenges municipalities like the Town of Sussex face in making infrastructure decisions today. Infrastructure renewal represents arguably the toughest challenge facing municipalities across Canada including the Town of Sussex. Decisions about maintaining, replacing and repairing infrastructure have significant consequences not only for a municipality’s bottom line, but also for residents, neighbourhoods and the natural environment. In which we all live.

Why Invest in Asset Management?

Take a moment to view a short video explaining the need for Asset Management and Capital Improvement Planning in our community.

Sussex’s Innovative approach to infrastructure planning; Towns and cities across Canada, including the Town of Sussex, face a constant struggle to maintain aging infrastructure, such as stormwater systems, roads, buildings and other municipal assets, while also building new services and systems to meet community needs. Add to that the pressure to adapt to, and prepare for, climate change, and the need to manage development in an environmentally responsible manner, and our Sussex Council has a lot on their plates.

Asset management planning is believed to be a solution to making better infrastructure investments for the residents of the Town of Sussex. It’s an innovative approach to managing physical assets in a way that is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable in the long term.

Creating the Town of Sussex asset management plan can help Sussex address specific infrastructure needs while also preparing for climate change. It will help Sussex identify the infrastructure investments that make the most financial sense in the long run for our municipality. We need your help.

Asset management calls for an integrated, holistic approach to community infrastructure. This approach involves analyzing all relevant factors, such as the costs of construction and ongoing maintenance, along with environmental, social and community impacts. The goal is to ensure that municipalities can deliver the services that residents need and want at costs they can afford. Over the last year the Town of Sussex has been collecting data and with the assistance of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) we have been developing our Asset Management Plan. A new requirement of the Provincial Government. Sussex was one very few of the 106 municipalities in the province that has submitted an Asset Management Plan prior to the submission deadline of July 31, 2018.

The key to asset management is access to, and analysis of, accurate, current and relevant data. To plan effectively, a municipality must have a good idea of what the future is likely to hold: how its population and economy will evolve and how local weather patterns will change over the long term the projected lifecycle of most community infrastructure.  

We’ve created an Asset Management Survey to assist the Town in completing our planning process. The survey takes just a few minutes to complete  and your opinion will assist the Town to develop and determine the Level of Service that meets the needs of every resident of the Town of Sussex. 

You will find the survey here.

For more information on either Asset Management or the Survey please contact the Town Office at 432-4540.