In 2006, at the direction of its members through a series of facilitated national focus groups, WERF launched a multi-year research and development project to strengthen the practice of Asset Management. The Project is called the Strategic Asset Management (SAM) project. It is comprised of four separate but integrated Tracks. Track 3 of WERFs Strategic Asset Management Project was developed to provide guidance on implementing SAM&and develop analytic tools for SAM implementation - the Decision Support Tools and Implementation Guidance goal. In Track 3, the Decision Support Tools and Implementation Guidance goal was organized around two major elements: 

Phase 3 (the current Phase about which this Research Digest reports) of the Project provided for the development of and inclusion in SIMPLE (WERFs on-line Asset Management Knowledge Base) the following five asset management support Tools: 

These Tools join the Gap Analysis and the Benefit Cost Tools developed in Phase 1 and the Level of Service, Condition Assessment Scoring, Business Risk Exposure and the Capital Investment Validation and Prioritization Tools developed in Phase 2. This phase (Phase 3) completes the scheduled work on Track 3 for the SAM project. This Research Digest briefly outlines the Tools developed in Phase 3 of Track 3. Each chapter describes a separate Tool. The Tools have been added to SIMPLE, WERFs web based asset management knowledge base. The Tools are also available in stand-alone versions by downloading the desired Tool or Tools from SIMPLE.