By Nyiko Chabalala, Building Services/Research & Development Engineer at Citadel

Infrastructure is an asset that is at the core of a functioning society; it shapes economic growth, enhances the quality of life of citizens, and provides the platform for a nation’s growth.

Neglected and decaying infrastructure has far-reaching negative consequences, undermining both economic growth societal health and well-being while raising red flags for citizen’s safety. Inadequate basic services impede commercial and public investment, hindering the potential for a thriving economy. To provide access to healthcare, education, and opportunities for all, the first premise is to ensure access to and protection of the assets that provide safe drinking water, proper sanitation, and functional transportation systems.

Maintaining essential infrastructure such as roads, water supply, sanitation and electricity should be a ‘no-brainer’ as besides providing a beneficial facility for so many citizens, it makes economic sense to maintain the asset rather than to rebuild and replace, avoiding costly disruptions. This long-term benefit is illustrated in life cycle costing – a process that informs and monitors overall project cost and strategically, when maintenance must occur.

Recognising the benefits of coordinated project implementation, monitoring, budgeting and planned maintenance, but also realising the complexity of the task, has led Citadel House of Technologies to develop its software program – Fortress. Fortress ensures effective inventory, maintenance management and operations as well as holistic lifecycle planning for today and for future generations in the organisation.

Having the ability to manage the project implementation, as well as the asset life cycle in a single application, provides the principal with a powerful tool, or a practitioner with a strategic advantage in that it enables them to offer a value-added service to their client. By initiating the project within Fortress, the principals or practitioner is able to start collecting data on the asset from the onset, which can provide insightful reports that enable easily made maintenance related decisions. For practitioners, it also makes it easy to transition the client into a continued maintenance contract within the Fortress system.

Numerous technical studies confirm that regular maintenance of assets results in a substantially longer lifespan of the asset. Furthermore, if the maintenance is carried out at optimal intervals, it results in much more cost-effective maintenance, leading to substantial savings for the asset owner.

Fortress can be utilised by every organisation or institution that has assets and maintenance operations. Besides national, provincial and local government assets, these include educational and medical institutions, private and commercial enterprises as well as data centre operations. By using Fortress, organisations can ensure effective inventory, maintenance management and operations as well as holistic lifecycle planning for the life of the asset.

With a bigger focus on asset maintenance and replacement planning, Fortress combines the planning and acquisition activities of the asset life cycle into a single module. These activities include vendor and service provider engagement, procurement planning, asset class definition management, and asset register management.

Citadel House of Technologies International specialises in designing and building various applications and developing software to enhance business efficiency. Its solutions aim to assist with planning and acquisition, deployment, analysis, and operations and maintenance.