Asset Management Plan

What is Asset Management?

Asset management helps manage infrastructure by planning for its entire life cycle—design, construction, operation, maintenance, and eventual replacement. It combines engineering, financial, and planning practices to provide the best service at the lowest cost.

We rely on asset management to help deliver services like transportation, water, wastewater, parks, and trails. Good asset management helps meet community needs, manage risks, and ensure sustainable funding.

Every day, visitors, businesses and individuals take advantage of a City asset. It might be the roads you drive on, the sidewalks and trails you walk on, the public pool you swim in, or how you access clean drinking water. These are some examples of the $2.7 billion in assets the City manages. We maintain, upgrade or replace these assets as one way we deliver value to taxpayers and improve the quality of life in our city.

Why is Asset Management important?

The City of Niagara Falls provides a range of services to residents, businesses and visitors that require physical assets, including transportation, stormwater management, water, wastewater, parks and recreation, fire protection, and municipal administration services such as by-law enforcement and development planning. To deliver these services, the City relies on a wide range of infrastructure assets that are best managed by developing asset management plans and practices. Good asset management provides us with tools and processes necessary for decision-making that take into consideration:

• The servicing needs of the community
• Risk management
• Sustainable funding levels

Investing in asset management ensures our infrastructure meets current and future needs while addressing risks like climate change. Our Asset Management Plan (AMP) guides how we prioritize and balance every asset for the long term.  Ontario Regulation 588/17 guides municipalities in our asset management programming and requires us to carefully assess and update our approach to delivering critical services for the long term.

Watch the videos on YouTube to learn more:

• Principles of Asset Management
• What is Asset Management?
• Asset Management Planning
• Implementing Asset Management

Asset Management in Niagara Falls

Ontario’s O. Reg. 588/17 requires cities to create asset management plans. Niagara Falls adopted its Strategic Asset Management Policy and has approved plans for core assets (roads, water, stormwater, and wastewater) and non-core assets (parks, recreation, libraries, and more). Comprehensive asset management planning and practices help ensure that the City is prepared to deliver future-ready infrastructure, sustainable and accountable practices, and community-centred solutions.

• Future-Ready Infrastructure: The City's asset management planning practices are about setting realistic service levels for service delivery areas, such as transportation, water, wastewater, stormwater, parks and trails, etc., that suit the needs of the community. The City is committed to making informed decisions about maintaining and upgrading essential infrastructure.
• Sustainability and Accountability: One of the City’s key goals and objectives is to have transparent decision-making that guides and balances how we meet the City’s asset needs with our financial capacity, ensuring maximized and responsible use of user fees and tax dollars
• Community-Centred Solutions: The communities are vital as we develop a lifecycle management strategy for our assets. Good asset management practices prioritize investments and maintenance to preserve the services that matter most to our community.
• Your Voice, Your City: Niagara Falls is home to a diverse community, and wherever possible, we strive to meet the community's needs in a way that reflects the city's collective priorities

Policies and reports

• Asset Management Policy
• Asset Management Planning - Levels of Service Setting and Financial Plan - Final Report June 2025
• Asset Management Plan - Non-Core Assets - May 2024
• Asset Management Plan - Core Assets - June 2022
• Council Report MW-2024-26 Final Asset Management Plan - Non-Core Assets
• Council Report MW-2022-32 Final Asset Management Plan - Core Assets

Resources

• Reg. 588/17: Asset Management Planning for Municipal Infrastructure