Balancing sustainable service delivery and municipal budgets

Saint-Quentin is a vibrant small town in New Brunswick, known for its festivals and maple syrup. The majority of residents speak French as their primary language.

In addition to having a small population, Saint-Quentin is relatively remote, located over one hour driving distance from the largest local city, Edmundston. In January 2023, as part of New Brunswick's Local Governance Reform, Saint-Quentin was amalgamated with the surrounding rural areas and its population increased from about 2,200 to approximately 3,654. Serving this population are about 21 municipal staff.

Despite the common challenges of limited resources in a rural region, the Town of Saint-Quentin has achieved substantial progress in implementing asset management. Saint-Quentin’s success is driven by how well it has operationalized asset management through its policies, plans, and procedures, which are reshaping the day-to-day and annual activities at the municipal office.

Key factors for the Town’s advancement include:

• Leadership and coordination among senior municipal staff;
• Actively engaging in training and collaboration opportunities;
• Integration of processes and systems to make informed decisions;
• Ongoing support from Council; and,
• Commitment to continuous improvement.

The role of asset management leadership

Saint-Quentin’s asset management journey has been spearheaded by the General Manager, Suzanne Coulombe, who is supported by Gilles Croussette, Director of Public Works, and Monique Thériault, Director of Finance. This constitutes a “triple crown leadership” approach that facilitates cross-functional collaboration, good communication, and alignment of purpose across municipal operations.

Coulombe has championed a vision about the sustainability of Saint-Quentin that balances sustainability of service delivery and management of risks while maximizing the return on the Town’s budget.

“As of now, with respect to capital projects and five-year plans, the municipal decision-making process is focused on the data of the Asset Management Plan (AMP), which indicates the essential needs of the municipality. This effectively minimizes the risks associated with financial decisions and, in turn, the security of all municipal assets. This is an ongoing project, but we can firmly assert that we are at the final stage of implementation.”

– Suzanne Coulombe, General Manager - Clerk

Leveraging opportunities for training and collaboration

Saint-Quentin’s leaders champion a longer-term vision with a plan to develop necessary capabilities. Over the past several years, Saint-Quentin has made notable efforts to adopt leading practices that address challenges in providing services sustainably and cost-effectively while minimizing risks to the community.

In 2017, Saint-Quentin participated in FCM’s Leadership in Asset Management Program with 17 other municipalities. This helped the municipality gain the knowledge to develop its own asset management policy and governance structure. It also laid the foundations for the Town’s Asset Management Strategy. The experience provided insight into how other Canadian municipalities were tackling asset management challenges and sharing solutions. The guide How to develop an asset management policy, strategy and governance framework captures the best practices of the 17 municipalities that participated in the Program.

Saint-Quentin also participated in other group-based learning opportunities, such as the Municipal Asset Management Program (MAMP). Through MAMP, Saint-Quentin staff gained perspectives and insights into implementing asset management by sharing experiences with other municipalities across New Brunswick and Quebec.

Integrating processes and systems supports evidence-informed decision-making

Saint-Quentin has operationalized asset management by linking the Town’s asset inventory with its geographical information system (GIS), and by aligning its capital planning with operations and maintenance activities.

Working with the Association Francophone des Municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick (AFMNB), Saint-Quentin has entered its assets into a central registry that is integrated with a ‘Geoportal,’ which functions as a geographic information system combined with a capital planning tool. This allows the town’s assets to be represented visually according to age, condition, and other risks, with risks colour-coded according to urgency.

To realize the full potential of the Geoportal, Gilles Croussette identified and addressed gaps in Saint-Quentin’s asset inventory, created data forms to collect and refine the data, and communicated outcomes through a customizable dashboard. These actions enable Council and senior management to visualize their assets quickly to support evidence-informed decision-making.

Saint-Quentin also uses asset management to improve operations and maintenance activities. For example, the Town uses data about its field sizes to estimate the time taken to mow and plans the service crews to minimize work stoppage for re-fueling or time wasted going back to the garage.

These contributions might seem small, but in aggregate they strengthen the line of sight between asset management at a strategic level and frontline operations and maintenance activities. Operational teams understand the connection between service levels, data collection, and processes that contribute to the Town’s effective operations.

“The collection of data and the implementation of work orders through the Geoportal has brought a sense of unity to all the parties involved. We have team players on all levels working towards the same goal and we now have a better understanding of each other’s functions and challenges.”

– Gilles Croussette, Director of Public Works

Saint-Quentin has begun to implement a multi-criteria risk assessment of its assets. Using insights from this process, the Town schedules work orders and asset rehabilitation to maximize the lifecycle of its assets. The Town can now proactively schedule asset interventions based on inventory and lifecycle forecasts.

Their asset management system aligns work order functions – which typically involve frontline staff – with strategic direction, which involves senior management. This translates asset management from being a theoretical framework to something practical and tangible across the organization.

Support from council

With input from staff, Council helps residents understand the need to care for the Town’s infrastructure over the long-term. Council also helps residents understand how investments in operations, maintenance, and renewal are linked to the quality of services they enjoy.

The Town recently updated its Asset Management Plan (available in French) to make it more practical, with clearer objectives that are easier for a layperson to understand. They have created an engaging web page that highlights Saint-Quentin’s focus on managing its infrastructure to provide better services. The Asset Management Plan webpage is thoughtfully designed and invites residents to learn more about different projects and initiatives. It encourages a sense of accountability and transparency and helps to illustrate how asset management advances Council’s decision-making. These actions have promoted buy-in, trust and a shared decision-making framework for the community.

Next steps and continuous improvement

A systems perspective and commitment to long-term improvement are critical in implementing this asset management strategy. Marcel Vienneau, the Asset Management Coordinator at AFMNB, says of Saint-Quentin: “One of their best qualities is that they are hard at work and are not discouraged easily. Other organizations would have dropped their asset management initiative if there were no immediate benefits. But Saint-Quentin has pushed through, knowing that asset management has real benefits and is not just a paper exercise.”

Saint-Quentin plans to refine its risk management to consider five criteria in its risk assessment matrix: social, economic, legal, technological, and environmental factors. They are continuing efforts to explain the value of their asset management initiatives to Council and residents. They are also extending asset management practices to non-core infrastructure services, such as parks and recreation.

Work on updating the Town’s asset inventory, ensuring that data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, is ongoing. Integrating climate change considerations into asset risks and strategic planning is also important to the Town. Saint-Quentin completed the first phase of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) program, which entailed integrating municipal greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories into a joint database managed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and ICLEI Canada.

By normalizing and habituating good asset management practices, Saint-Quentin maximizes the potential success of its efforts. The Town takes the long view and approaches asset management with discipline and consistency. This enables Saint-Quentin to anticipate and deal with changes more effectively. Realizing that asset management is a journey, the advice from Croussette to other municipalities is: “Don’t wait to start. Get on the asset management operationalization journey now. Be patient, but hurry up!”

Related resources

• Town of Saint-Quentin’s Asset Management Plan (available in French)
• Municipal “Geoportal” offered by the Association Francophone des Municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick (available in French)

Contact

Suzanne Coulombe
CAO/Clerk

Gilles Croussette
Director of Pubilc Works