Asset Management
The City of Richmond Hill manages and maintains approximately $13 billion worth of infrastructure assets across 11 defined service areas, including roads, watermains, sewers, parks/outdoor recreation assets, facilities, fleet and equipment among others. These assets support the City in delivering critical services to the community.
Keeping City Infrastructure Reliable and Supporting the Strategic Plan
2025 Asset Management Plan |
The 2025 Asset Management Plan was approved by Council in May 2025, and represents the culmination of the City’s advancements in asset management over the last several years. It is an important guiding document that supports the long-term stewardship of the City’s existing assets. The plan aligns with previous Asset Management Plans and achieves compliance with Provincial legislation for Asset Management by meeting the July 1, 2025 milestone of Ontario Regulation 588/17, Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure. The City’s 2025 Asset Management Plan provides an assessment of all City-owned assets, the majority of which are in Good and Very Good condition. The plan also details the City’s current asset levels of service and associated performance. A new aspect of this Asset Management Plan is the identification of proposed levels of service, which stipulate the City’s plan to continue to achieve service levels into the future. The Asset Management Plan culminates in a financial strategy, which provides direction on how the City can fund and achieve its plan. This 2025 Asset Management Plan guides the City’s investments in infrastructure to ensure services are delivered at the lowest lifecycle costs and risks are kept low. The findings from the Asset Management Plan are integrated into the City’s annual Capital Budget and Forecast, to ensure that the City is putting the plan into action. Moving forward, the City will monitor the implementation of this plan through annual reports to Council and will continue to develop Asset Management Plans every five years as required by the Provincial legislation. Read the 2025 Asset Management Plan. |
2024 Asset Management Plan |
The 2024 Asset Management Plan was approved by Council in June 2024. It provides an assessment of all City-owned assets as well as a framework for the efficient and cost-effective maintenance of City infrastructure by detailing current asset Levels of Service and performance, the asset renewal actions through the Asset Management (Lifecycle) Strategies, and an Asset Investment Strategy prioritized based on risk. Key factors impacting asset management planning such as evolving demographic trends, growth and climate change were also taken into consideration. The plan helped support and inform the development of the City’s 2025 Capital Budget and Forecast, by guiding when and where investment was needed to repair or replace City assets and ensure crucial services to the community were delivered in a financially sustainable manner. The approved plan achieved compliance with the July 1, 2024 milestone of Ontario Regulation 588/17, Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure. Read the 2024 Asset Management Plan. |
2023 State of Infrastructure Report |
The City’s inaugural State of Infrastructure report was endorsed by Council in June 2023. This report built on the 2021 Asset Management Plan by providing an updated summary of all the City of Richmond Hill’s infrastructure, and identifying potential infrastructure needs to inform the capital budgeting process. It provided a consistent analysis and reporting approach in one consolidated report. It included updated asset inventories, replacement values, conditions, and ages relative to service lives. This report facilitated an improved line of sight of how asset conditions, lifecycle investments, and service levels evolve over time from the addition of new assets, deterioration of existing assets, and prior capital renewals. This supported capital programming for the City’s capital budgeting process. The 2023 State of Infrastructure Report was a precursor to the 2024 Asset Management Plan by establishing an updated full state of infrastructure for City-owned assets. Read the 2023 State of Infrastructure Report. |
2021 Asset Management Plan |
The 2021 Asset Management Plan was approved by Council in June 2021. This approved plan established compliance with the July 1, 2022 milestone of Ontario Regulation 588/17, Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure, one year ahead of the regulatory milestone. The plan outlined the City’s approaches for the efficient and cost-effective management of the City’s Core+ assets to ensure that the community stays safe and services are maintained. It provided a long-term in-depth understanding of the City’s Core+ infrastructure assets (state of infrastructure), how the City manages them (lifecycle strategies), how well those actions are working (service levels), and how much it would cost to maintain them to provide City services (capital investment forecasting, risk and gaps). Core+ encompasses the definition of “core municipal infrastructure assets” as outlined in the provincial regulation, and also includes the City’s active transportation infrastructure (within right-of-way) and recreation facilities (community centres and arenas). The scope of the 2021 Asset Management Plan included:
The plan also took into consideration changing demographic trends, growth and the City’s Climate Change Framework. |
Robust Asset Management Planning Process and Policy |
The City’s Asset Management Planning Process is built on a robust framework of formal plans, policies and strategies, and details specific guiding principles, business practices, processes for continuous improvement, and defined roles and responsibilities. The City’s asset management journey has focused on leveraging innovative technologies and processes, utilizing the best available data through ongoing asset condition assessments, and implementing continuous improvements. As part of this, the City has been continually enhancing the condition assessments of its assets and proactively investing in them to ensure they provide reliable services for the community. Asset management practices move the City’s 2024-2027 Strategic Plan forward by tracking, managing and optimizing the quality and reliability of infrastructure for the community. Richmond Hill’s principles and commitments to asset management planning are outlined in the City's updated Asset Management Policy, which was approved by Council on June 5, 2024. The Asset Management Policy conforms to the prescribed requirements in Ontario Regulation 588/17. The Policy establishes the City’s sound asset management principles, including fiscal responsibility, consideration of risk, alignment with the 2024-2027 Strategic Plan and Official Plan, utilizing asset management to inform capital programming and the commitment to share the Asset Management Plan with the public. These principles are integrated with ongoing capital lifecycle asset interventions, recommended through the City’s Asset Management Plans. |
Enterprise Asset Management System |
The 2021 Asset Management Plan, 2023 State of Infrastructure Report, 2024 Asset Management Plan and 2025 Asset Management Plan are the result of recent advancements in the City’s asset management planning capabilities and its Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. The EAM system is a web-based software application developed and maintained in-house by City Staff using important information from across all service areas. The software incorporates inventories of all City-owned assets as well as other pertinent information including asset condition information, replacement values, lifecycle capital interventions, service levels, a risk framework and much more. It also provides current and forecasted information on the City’s assets to support evidence-based infrastructure investment decisions. This application enables the City to utilize current asset information to forecast the impacts of funding on asset performance into the future. This allows the City to select and prioritize capital projects to ensure that funding is used as efficiently as possible on the work that matters most to the City. |
Informing the Capital Budgeting and Forecasting Process and Supporting Financial Sustainability
The City’s Asset Management Plans, State of Infrastructure report and Enterprise Asset Management system are all key inputs to inform the development of capital budgets and forecasts, by helping to identify and guide the prioritization of capital investments using asset data and the City’s risk framework so that funding is directed to where it is needed the most. Updating the City’s asset information regularly and using that information to proactively inform and support prioritization of capital programming using risk criticality is an asset management best practice that places the City of Richmond Hill among other leading municipalities, and will contribute to the long-term financial sustainability of the City.