Penny’s Place, Welcome!

This site contains the work of Dr Penny Burns

Dr Penny Burns created the discipline of Asset Management in response to the need to first measure and then manage the problem of large-scale, unplanned renewal of infrastructure assets in South Australia.  How it began in 1984 and developed over the next 10 years is described in her book, ‘The Story of Asset Management’.  But neither Asset Management nor Penny’s work stopped there.

In 1994, Penny launched the first practical newsletter for Asset Managers, the ‘Asset Management Quarterly’, sharing what she was learning. In 1996, she started the International Asset Management Competitions, and in 1998, she launched the first website devoted to Asset Management, covering all assets and all levels of government, as well as the private sector.  Her focus, however, was infrastructure.  By 1999, ideas were developing so rapidly that the quarterly newsletter became the fortnightly ‘Strategic Asset Management’ (SAM). The 400th and final issue was published in September 2014.  

In 2016, she launched Talking Infrastructure with her colleagues, Jeff Roorda, David Hope, and Gregory Punshon, to help asset managers bring their knowledge to the decision-making level.   Ruth Wallsgrove joined shortly after and now leads the Talking Infrastructure’s group of senior thought leaders, including Penny.

What is here now

To start with, we have uploaded the original ‘Asset Management Quarterly’ and all 400 Issues of ‘Strategic Asset Management’, complete with an index. You can either use the index to search for subjects of interest or browse issues at random.  Articles are designed to seed the important ideas, not to tell you everything, so they are short and interesting. Below are a few examples.

As time permits, more work will be added: papers, presentations, reports, book chapters and journal articles, plus some ‘back stories’ explaining how the ideas came about and how they were received at the time.