Asset Management

Asset management, broadly defined, refers to any system that monitors and maintains things of value to an entity or group. It may apply to both tangible assets such as buildings and to intangible concepts such as intellectual property and goodwill. Asset management is a systematic process of operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets cost-effectively, (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials). Alternative views of asset management in the engineering environment are: The practice of managing assets to achieve the greatest return (particularly useful for productive assets such as plant and equipment), and the process of monitoring and maintaining facilities systems, with the objective of providing the best possible service to users (appropriate for public infrastructure assets). Most active money managers produce worse returns than an index, such as the Standard & Poor's 500. (the main reason for this is that no matter how well the fund tracks the index, the manager will take out their fee, reducing the return).