Provision of Institute of Asset Management (IAM) Qualification

Modernising asset management (AM) is one of the Environment Agency's top priorities. Our Flood and Coastal Risk Management (FCRM) Asset Management Strategy 2017 to 2022 (AMS) aligns to the FCRM objectives of our corporate plan and describes what we need to do to become a world leading AM organisation.

Our AMS was approved by FCRM Business Board in January 2017. We are achieving many of the objectives of the strategy already but there is some new work still to complete, including developing staff skills and knowledge. A significant part of our strategy describes our objectives for our staff skills and knowledge, and our leadership and organisational culture.

We need to raise awareness of AM and embed it amongst our people who work on our assets. We wish to adopt an AM culture within the organisation and this will require enhanced knowledge of AM, and committed and visible leadership. This will build on existing capabilities and enable individuals to champion change, support the use of new terminologies and language, and drive the modernisation of AM. We will then be capable of making the changes needed to modernise AM and retain ISO55001 certification.

In order to recognise and demonstrate individual and corporate knowledge and understanding of AM, we wish to train and inform our key AM staff to IAM Certificate level. The IAM Certificate is aimed at Managers, Team Leaders, Senior Advisors and Advisors in Area and National roles. By training our staff in modern AM thinking we will be able to better justify, prioritise and programme where we spend our money and where we don't, and ensure our assets are more effective, efficient and resilient.

Previous demand for the IAM Certificate has been significant and we have a backlog of delegates seeking training. Area teams have organised ad-hoc, local training which, whilst meeting the objectives, is inefficient. We therefore wish to instigate a 3-year call-off contract to provide the IAM Certificate training and examination for approximately 90 FCRM AM staff. The contract will start in late 2019 and end at the end of the current AMS period in March 2022.

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