New city office bolsters asset management efforts

St. Petersburg is home to 893 insured city-owned structures, 2,100 miles of streets and 3,500 miles of pipes. A new office is establishing asset management objectives and implementing lifecycle strategies.

The Office of Asset Management’s overarching goal is to provide decision makers with the data needed to prioritize capital improvement projects. Much of that information remains siloed across departments and reporting systems.

Director Philip Lazzara, who took the helm in 2024, is now establishing common asset registries, data standards and processes. He provided city council members with their first update on the office’s work at a Sept. 11 Public Services and Infrastructure Committee meeting.

“I’ve had many conversations with residents out there in terms of, what are our infrastructure needs?” said Councilmember Lisset Hanewicz. “Some we have plans for, and we have an idea of what those needs are. And some we actually don’t.”

Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley began the presentation by stating that most of the city’s “dollar value is in our assets.” Those include 250 traditional buildings, 643 other structures, 100 miles of alleys, 770 miles of sidewalks and 14 miles of seawalls.

A sewer system crisis in 2016 led to the Capital Asset Management Program (CAMP). Officials subsequently completed an Integrated Water Resources Master Plan and over $400 million in capital asset improvements.

The city’s video assessment of all buried sanitary sewer pipes concluded in 2023. Those efforts led to the creation of an asset management office, which Tankersley said provides “leadership citywide for all of the different departments.”

Lazzara said CAMP, which officially launched in 2021, helps administrators “minimize outages and costs at the same time,” and “use tax dollars as efficiently as possible.” The initiative also codified the city’s commitment to risk management, resilience, data-driven priorities, innovation and fostering “public trust and equity.”

In 2022, the city hired a consultant to conduct a gap analysis. The study’s results informed the Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP), adopted in 2023.

The Office of Asset Management (OAM) launched with the arrival of Lazzara and Manager Jennifer Anderson, both of whom previously worked in other departments. Lazzara – who apologized for the influx of acronyms – said their mission is to “provide leadership for the CAMP, and facilitate implementation of the SAMP.”

The two have since identified initiatives that comprise CAMP’s second phase. Those include streamlining interdepartmental communication and implementing a citywide system to disseminate and share capital asset data.

“A new initiative within this communication objective is to establish a working group throughout departments to discuss facility service contracts,” Lazzara said. “Mechanical components that require preventative maintenance, have useful lives and, ultimately, end up causing problems if we don’t maintain them properly.”

He said a new cloud-based Oracle platform will help officials understand the condition of assets and, “ideally,” forecast the need for replacements and associated costs. Lazzara said his office’s current focus is compiling more detailed information regarding city-owned buildings.

“Understanding all the details of these components is going to be critical to us really doing this properly,” he added. “Asset information standards are not the same across all departments. We’ve also got siloed information between different systems used by different departments.”

Lazzara noted that outside companies often maintain city assets. The OAM is also working to standardize contract and procurement information that it can incorporate into the new management platform.

He said the office, if successful, could then present council members with graphics and dashboards highlighting the status of various asset classes. For example, officials could easily see the remaining useful life of municipally-owned roofs, “either citywide or by department.”

“Graphics like this, if we can get there, will be really helpful for us to be able to tell you a story that will inform your decision-making when it comes time for capital improvement decisions,” Lazzara continued. “And other decisions related to the budget.”

Long-term goals include self-performing asset assessments, or to “at least be more educated ourselves when we’re listening to a third-party provider.”

Hanewicz credited Lazzara, Tankersley and Anderson for undertaking a “monumental task.” She noted that council members need additional data to inform and prioritize policy decisions.

Councilmember Richie Floyd suggested periodically conducting an impact analysis to “be able to defend continuation down this path.” Lazzara pledged that the OAM is “getting creative” to align reporting systems and provide a holistic view of the city’s assets.

Tankersley reiterated that the process “touches just about every single office and department in the city.” The OAM will now provide the committee with annual updates.