Building an asset register from nothing

The way to build an asset register is one building at a time, starting with the equipment that would hurt if it failed. Estate-wide survey projects are how this task acquires a reputation for taking eighteen months and being out of date on delivery.

Do not start with a spreadsheet

Start by walking a building with a phone, adding equipment where it stands, photographing the nameplate and putting a code on it as you go. What comes back is correct, because it was recorded in front of the thing rather than transcribed from a drawing that is fifteen years old.

The order to collect in

• •Anything that would injure somebody if it failed, or that a regulator asks about
• •Anything that stops the building being usable: heating, cooling, power, water, lifts
• •Anything that has failed in the last twelve months
• •Anything expensive to replace
• •Everything else, as work happens to touch it

Most of the value arrives in the first two groups, and they are usually a few dozen items per building rather than a few hundred.

Photograph the nameplate, always

Make, model and serial number typed at the machine will contain errors. A photograph of the plate can be read later, checked against a parts order, and settles arguments with suppliers. It takes two seconds and it is the single highest-value habit in this work.

Use the drawings as a checklist, not a source

Building drawings and old asset lists are useful for one thing: telling you what to go and look for. Anything you have not seen with your own eyes does not go in the register as fact. Mark it as unconfirmed and confirm it on the walk.

Expect to find both kinds of error

Every first walk finds equipment on the old list that was removed years ago, and equipment in the building that was never recorded. Both are normal and both are the point. Finding a chiller nobody knew about is worth the afternoon on its own.

Set the finish line

The register is done for a building when you can stand in each plant room and find every significant item on the list, and every item on the list in a plant room. Not when a field is filled in for every row. Fields can be added forever; the walk is what makes it true.