2I STISK: Strategic Asset Management in Small Municipalities with Limited Capacity

Purpose and Background

The project aims, through interactive knowledge development, to explore how municipalities with limited capacity can implement asset management while fostering learning throughout the process.

Municipal efforts to manage their assets are affected by several major challenges: deferred maintenance, changing population structures, and the need for climate transition. These factors require new investments and prioritizations, which are particularly difficult for municipalities with limited capacity. For these municipalities, strategic asset management is about finding ways to maintain and develop their infrastructure so that it meets future needs—without jeopardizing financial stability. At the same time, they must navigate state regulations, regional collaboration, and local decision-making, which is often difficult to balance.

Municipalities with limited capacity may lack resources in several areas: financial, organizational, technical/staffing, political, or citizen engagement.

The purpose of the project is to increase understanding of how such municipalities can work strategically with their assets. The study focuses on local strategies and governance in order to prioritize and develop infrastructure despite financial constraints and increasing sustainability requirements.

Implementation

The project uses an interactive research approach, meaning that knowledge is developed through close collaboration between researchers and municipal actors.

The starting point is that understanding strategic asset management cannot be developed solely through traditional, detached studies—it needs to be shaped through reflective dialogue between theory and practice. In this way, mutual learning is created, where researchers and practitioners jointly identify problems, analyze challenges, and develop courses of action.

The project will use a combination of learning workshops, interviews, and document studies. During the workshops, participants learn together, from researchers and from each other through the sharing of experiences. The meetings are designed to help participants learn about strategic asset management, reflect on their own situations, and gain a “toolbox” to apply relevant methods in their own organizations, while researchers gain insights into municipal conditions and possible paths forward.

Objectives

After completion, the project aims to have enabled the implementation of strategic asset management in small municipalities.

Read more about the project at Linköping University:
Half a million SEK for research on asset management in smaller municipalities