Jeddah Airports Company (Jedco) has appointed global programme management company Turner & Townsend to design and implement an enterprise‑wide asset management system at King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, aligned to the international standard for asset management, ISO 55001.

An asset management system gives an organisation one consistent basis for making those decisions. Instead of assets being managed function by function, Jedco is putting in place shared asset management objectives, clear accountability across all levels of the organisation, governed and trusted asset information, and a common method for balancing cost, risk and performance across the full asset lifecycle.

ISO 55001 provides the international benchmark against which the system is being built and will be independently assessed. 

KAIA is one of the kingdom’s most strategically significant aviation gateways, the primary hub for national carrier Saudia and a principal gateway for millions of pilgrims travelling to Makkah and Madinah each year. How the airport’s terminals, airfield infrastructure, baggage handling systems and building services are invested in, operated, maintained and renewed over their whole life directly shapes operational reliability, safety and the passenger journey.

Jedco said the programme is already delivering. Its first corporate Asset Management Policy has been formally approved, a governance structure for asset management decision‑making has been established at executive level, and development of the Strategic Asset Management Plan and the first Asset Management Plans for critical airport systems is under way.

Since the programme began, Jedco and Turner & Townsend have completed a comprehensive ISO 55001 gap assessment covering every clause of the standard and converted the findings into a prioritised improvement roadmap, it added.-TradeArabia News Service