Sustainability has become a critical focus for organizations overseeing assets. These organizations manage the entire life cycle of assets, from development to disposal, and they are expected to plan ahead for a changing climate and increasingly ambitious sustainability targets. It is therefore important for the strategic planning process to incorporate a vision on sustainability targets. While the importance of sustainability in asset management (AM) is widely acknowledged, it remains unclear how its value is embedded in the strategic direction of AM organizations. This paper addresses that gap by analysing how sustainability is reflected in their strategic objectives. The strategic objectives were sourced from eight strategic asset management plans (SAMPs) documents and were collected from various public infrastructure and non-profit organizations in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States of America and Australia. In total, 142 strategic objectives were then analyzed using a combination of thematic and content analysis. They were examined both through two sets of value dimensions: AM - focusing on cost, risk, opportunity, and performance - and through sustainability focusing on the triple bottom line framework. The results indicate that sustainability is frequently embedded in strategic objectives and is framed less as a cost or risk and more so as a source of performance benefits. Although the limited sample of public SAMPs demonstrates the good intentions of the analyzed AM organizations, further analysis is needed to assess whether and how their objectives are being realized. Additionally, the sample population should be expanded.
Richards et al. (Thu,) studied this question.