Peer review of road authorities in Africa

The nine nations of Southern Africa have joined forces for the support and development of their major roads networks. This organisation, ASANRA, is striving for PAS 55 certification. To achieve this goal it is necessary to determine a starting point for improvement. IES has helped the organisation and its national members to perform a peer review benchmark based on the PAM tool. This tool was developed by the Institute for Asset Management to assess the maturity level of the Asset Management processes in an organisation.

After a self-assessment by each of the member states IES facilitated a workshop to discuss results and determine a roadmap to PAS-55 certification. Each of the member states scored quite low on the assessment (below 1 on a 0 to 4 scale), so there is plenty of room for improvement. That said, the results were hopeful since engagement of the participants was very high.

The main lesson from the assessments was that the people at ASANRA had a hard time to assign priority to the tasks they are facing.  In response to this, the IES-team set up a workshop. The purpose of this workshop was to create a step-by-step action plan. The plan was created by combining two powerful methods: role-playing and futuring. These methods force the participants to step outside of their own roles and the day-to-day. The workshop resulted in an action plan for each country. The two overarching themes are: increase AM-related knowledge and secure long term commitment. Once these conditions are met a step-by-step approach towards PAS-55 certification can help Southern Africa to have the road networks it needs to continue its way up in the world.