by Berend Booms, Associate Editor, Future of Assets
In my work for the Future of Assets platform, I speak with many leaders navigating the challenges that define today’s asset landscape. The best conversations rarely start by looking at a balance sheet, yet that is where our conversations about value tend to begin. The “real” value often emerges in quieter moments, between the urgency of keeping operations up and running.
In many ways, Global Asset Management Day is an extension of those moments. It creates a pause in an otherwise continuous flow of activity, offering a moment to reflect on how we manage assets and what kind of value we create through that effort.
Rethinking Value in Asset Management
This year’s theme is “Value Realised, Everywhere”. For me, it speaks to a shift that has been building for some time, where value is no longer something captured in financial terms alone. While cost control and performance will always remain critical to how we approach the management of assets, they no longer provide a complete picture of value creation. The environments in which assets deliver value have become more complex. Assets themselves are now part of larger, interconnected systems, and the impact of global socio-economic pressures extends far beyond traditional operational boundaries.
This shift in scale makes the idea of “everywhere” more meaningful. It reflects the reality that the impact of how we manage assets is no longer contained within the perimeter of a plant, a site, or even an organization. It ripples outward, influencing supply chains, communities, industries, and increasingly, society at large.
The global ramifications of this become more visible by the day. Aging infrastructure, supply chain challenges, energy transitions, resource constraints, and workforce shortages are not isolated challenges. They are shared realities, experienced in different ways across regions and sectors, but connected through a common set of underlying dynamics. Once seen as a primarily technical or operational discipline, asset management is now steadily taking on a more strategic role in addressing these challenges.
It’s a shift that is driven by more than just technology. The past decades have shown us that while technology expands what is possible, it does not automatically translate into better outcomes. The real transformation begins when we move beyond tools and start to think in terms of systems, connecting data, decisions and accountability in a way that holds up under real-world conditions.
This systemic approach makes value something that is created through alignment rather than isolated optimization: it’s not just about improving individual metrics, but about strengthening the system as a whole. It also opens up the scope of the value conversation significantly.
How Value Is Realized Across People, Skills, and Culture
Value can be realized everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident than in how we develop people. Skills gaps and labor shortages are a common challenge in many industries, which is why the ability to attract, train and retain talent is becoming a defining factor of long-term performance. Apprenticeships and structured learning pathways play an important role in helping organizations sustain capability over time. When someone enters the workforce and finds not just a job but a path for growth and development, that is value being realized in a very tangible way.
Value can also be found in the way we approach inclusion and diversity. The pace of change in our industry is tremendous, with many people now looking to artificial intelligence as being the silver bullet that will transform the way we work. For AI to have meaningful impact, we need a workforce that understands how to work with these tools, and a new generation ready to meet the evolving skill requirements they bring. Expanding participation and creating opportunities for a broader range of perspectives helps create a culture where people feel they belong. Different perspectives challenge assumptions, help surface blind spots, create more resilient outcomes and ultimately lead to increased value being created through human capital.
‘Scientia potentia est,’ a Latin aphorism attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, translates to ‘knowledge is power’. I believe that knowledge itself is an asset, and there is tremendous value in how we manage it. As experienced workers retire and new generations enter the workforce, knowledge retention and knowledge transfer become increasingly critical. The key here is to create environments where learning is continuous, asking questions is encouraged, and experience is shared rather than lost. When done well, this creates a form of knowledge equity that compounds over time.
There is also value in how we engage with the communities around us. Most of our assets do not exist in isolation; they are part of a larger ecosystem. The way we operate, manage and maintain them has implications for safety and the environment. Whether we look at reducing emissions, improving energy efficiency, building grid resilience or contributing to local economic development, these are all expressions of value that extend beyond the organization itself.
From Value Extraction to Long-Term Stewardship
What ties all of these dimensions together is a shift in perspective. Moving from seeing value as something that has to be extracted to show up in the bottom line, to something that is created and sustained over time implies a shift from short-term performance to long-term stewardship.
This is what makes asset management such an exciting discipline for me. It sits at the intersection of engineering, operations, maintenance, leadership, and increasingly, societal responsibility. This is a discipline that requires a balance between precision and judgment, between data and experience, between immediate action and long-term strategy. Asset management is a field where the consequences of decisions are tangible, and the impact of getting it right creates value that extends far beyond the assets themselves.
It’s also a field that is reflective of the broader transitions we see in other parts of life. It reflects a broader truth that more information does not automatically lead to better understanding; more technology does not guarantee better outcomes; and progress is often less about doing more, and more about doing things differently.
Value Realized Through Connection
Days like Global Asset Management Day matter because they create this shared moment of reflection across a global community. They bring together people from different geographies, different industries, different perspectives and different backgrounds around a common purpose: to exchange ideas and to reinforce the importance of what we are building together.
Going back to this year’s theme, I believe that if value is to be realized everywhere, it cannot be created in isolation. It requires connection between people, between disciplines, between organizations, and across borders. It requires a willingness to share not just success stories, but also challenges and lessons learned. It requires an understanding that the systems we build today will shape the outcomes we experience tomorrow. The Future of Assets will be shaped by the collective effort of a global community that is learning, adapting, and evolving together. And perhaps that is the most important form of value we can realize: not just what we achieve individually, but what becomes possible when we move forward collectively.