Do We Really Know the Consequences of our Transportation Investment Decisions?

This paper presents observations on why major shifts in an organization’s business model never seem to get accomplished. In the asset management arena, most top managers can easily accept the concepts that we should know what we have; know its condition/value; and estimate its performance life. We would then like to evaluate various deployment options so as to make evidence-based decisions about our infrastructure investment, and do this in a way that is transparent to everybody, inside and outside the organization. However, we cannot seem to get past the philosophy stage for the following reasons: (1) complexity is an excuse for inaction; (2) it costs too much to change, so we don’t; and (3) getting employee buy-in drains management’s energy.