Inception & Development

Is there a stated outcome this asset is meant to produce, written down separately from a description of the asset itself?

When the outcome is never separated from the solution, every later question collapses into whether the thing was built as drawn. It becomes impossible to ask whether it should have been that thing, because no record survives of what it was for. Programmes in this condition can be delivered perfectly and still deliver nothing.

What to examine

• Find the document stating the outcome. If the only answer is a business case appendix nobody has opened since sanction, note that as the finding.
• Check whether the outcome is expressed as something measurable after handover, rather than as completion of the project.
• Establish who owns the outcome after the delivery organisation disbands. A named role, not a department.
• Compare the outcome as written at sanction with the outcome as described now. Drift between the two is normal; undocumented drift is the finding.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 4.1, requiring the organisation to determine external and internal issues relevant to its purpose and affecting its ability to achieve the intended outcomes of the asset management system.
• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 6.2.2, requiring asset management objectives to be measurable, monitored and consistent with the organisational objectives.
• ISO 21502:2020, Clause 5, on prerequisites for formalizing project management, and Clause 7 practices covering benefit management.
• PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, which carries focus on value among its six core principles.

Are the criteria by which options were chosen written down, and is it recorded who was entitled to choose?

This is the newest requirement in asset management and the one most organisations will fail on first, because it asks for something that usually exists only as habit. Without recorded criteria, an option appraisal cannot be audited: there is no standard against which to say the wrong option was selected, only a preference against a preference. It also makes delegation invisible, so nobody can establish afterwards whether the person who committed the money was entitled to.

What to examine

• Ask for the documented decision-making criteria. Their absence is itself a nonconformity against ISO 55001:2024, not merely a weakness.
• Check that the criteria cover the whole life of the asset and not only capital cost. Criteria that stop at delivery will select assets that are cheap to build and expensive to own.
• Trace one significant option decision back through the criteria and confirm the recorded rationale matches them.
• Confirm delegation limits exist in writing, and test one commitment against them.
• Check the methods and tools used are stated, since the standard requires these alongside the criteria.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 4.5, asset management decision-making, comprising 4.5.1 Framework, 4.5.2 Criteria and 4.5.3 Methods, processes and tools. This subclause is new in the second edition; it has no counterpart in ISO 55001:2014.
• PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, which carries governance as one of its seven performance domains.
• ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, on the project governance framework.

Does the estimate state the class it was produced at, and does that class match the scope definition actually achieved?

An estimate class is a statement about how much was known, not about how hard anyone worked. When a number produced at low definition is carried forward into a sanction paper without its range, the organisation commits to a figure that was never a commitment. The overrun that follows is then investigated as a delivery failure, which it is not.

What to examine

• Find the declared estimate class. An estimate with no declared class cannot be assured, only re-performed.
• Test the declared class against the definition deliverables actually complete at the time, since deliverable maturity is the sole primary determinant of class.
• Confirm the correct industry addendum was applied. The building and general construction ranges do not apply to transport infrastructure, tunnels, dams, or one-of-a-kind assets such as stadiums and health facilities.
• Check the accuracy range travelled with the number into the sanction paper, and whether the board saw a range or a point.
• Establish whether contingency was set at a stated confidence level, and whether anyone senior understands that a P50 estimate is designed to be exceeded about half the time.

Required by

• AACE International Recommended Practice 56R-08, cost estimate classification for the building and general construction industries, revision of 7 August 2020.
• AACE International Recommended Practice 18R-97, the process industries equivalent, 2 February 2005.
• PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, which carries finance as one of its seven performance domains.

An estimate is a measure of how well the scope is defined→

Has the cost of owning this asset been estimated by, or at least shown to, the people who will have to pay it?

Capital and operating budgets usually sit in different organisations with different reporting lines, and the design decisions that fix operating cost are taken entirely inside the first. The operator inherits a cost they did not forecast and cannot now avoid. This is the single largest transfer of unpriced obligation in the lifecycle and it happens without anyone breaching a control.

What to examine

• Ask whether an operating cost estimate exists at all. Frequently it does not.
• Identify who produced it. An operating estimate produced by the delivery team, with no operator involvement, is a delivery assumption rather than a forecast.
• Check whether any design decision has been reversed or altered on operating cost grounds. If none ever has, whole-life costing is presentational.
• Confirm the financial and technical views of the asset use the same asset breakdown, since alignment between them is the subject of its own standard.

Required by

• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 6.2.1, requiring a strategic asset management plan documenting the role of the asset management system in achieving the asset management objectives.
• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 8.1, which in the second edition makes explicit that operational planning and control includes life cycle management.
• ISO/TS 55010, guidance on the alignment of the financial and non-financial functions of the organisation in asset management.
• ISO 55000:2024, which states alignment among its principles: asset management aligns financial, technical and operational decisions with the organizational objectives.

You cannot buy an outcome you cannot specify→

Has the owner stated what it will need to know in order to run this asset, before the design that produces the information begins?

Handover specifications are usually written the other way round. Someone lists what a contractor can readily produce and hopes it turns out to be useful. The standard asks the harder question first, which is why it is so often skipped. Information requirements set after design has started cannot change what is captured, only what is compiled.

What to examine

• Find the organizational information requirements. Then check the asset information requirements derive from them rather than from a document schedule.
• Confirm the requirements name decisions, not deliverables. "Everything the contractor produces" is not a requirement.
• Check the date. Requirements issued after detailed design has begun are a compilation exercise.
• Establish whether operations were consulted, and whether anyone in operations can name the requirement.

Required by

• ISO 19650-3, information management during the operational phase of assets, under which asset information requirements derive from organizational information requirements.
• ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.6, data and information, a substantially expanded subclause in the second edition requiring the organisation to determine its data and information requirements, including attributes, quality and how data is to be managed.

Handover is where the cost lands, and the Gulf is now taking delivery→

Who is entitled to stop this, and have they ever been given information that would let them?

Most capital governance is well equipped to approve and poorly equipped to halt. Stage gates that cannot realistically return a negative answer are reporting events wearing the clothes of a control. The test of a gate is not whether it exists but whether anything has ever failed one.

What to examine

• Ask how many gates have been failed, deferred with conditions, or passed with conditions never subsequently closed. The last category is the most informative.
• Check whether the body approving the gate receives the estimate range or the estimate point.
• Establish whether the person chairing the gate carries delivery accountability. Where they do, note that the control and the thing being controlled share an owner.
• Confirm the gate criteria were set before the submission was prepared.

Required by

• ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, on the project governance framework and managing the delivery of a project.
• PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, governance performance domain.
• Global Internal Audit Standards, Institute of Internal Auditors, effective 9 January 2025, on governance of the internal audit function and the role of the board.