My inaugural BEPAM editorial in 2011, captured our vision in its title as: “Integrating ‘Infrastructure Project Management’ with its ‘Built Asset Management’.” The titles of subsequent editorials were intended to project our mission trajectory, through the following captions: “Overtaking targets and marking milestones” (1.2), “Making a mark and carving a niche” (2.1), “Digging in and drilling
... [Show full abstract] deeper” (2.2), “Joining hands and advancing together” (3.1), followed by a Special Issue on “PPP in Transport: Theory and Practice” (3.2). Volume 4 editorials were captioned “Spreading wings and soaring higher” (4.1), “Unlocking silos and unleashing synergies” (4.2) and “Straddling sub-themes and synergizing topics” (4.3), followed by a Special Issue on “Project Management and Asset Management in Emerging Economies.”
Volume 5 was heralded by “Unveiling linkages and uncorking excellence” (5.1) which reflected our sustained pursuit of core connections between project and asset management, while also targeting excellence in each area. In the context of the latter objective, 5.1 was followed by two Special Issues probing deeper into some specific areas relevant to BEPAM, i.e., “Leadership, Culture and Sustainable Built Environment” (5.2) and “BIM for Built Asset Management” (5.3). So it is not surprising that our current editorial caption above, revisits our over-arching vision in linking project management to build asset management, albeit now from an initial stage perspective of first breaking down and analyzing some of their many functions/“parts” – in both domains – by Unbundling Project Management and Unpacking Asset Management. This could be also seen as a necessary initial step in our journey toward re-assembling them more rationally (e.g. reducing gaps, duplications and conflicts) into a synergized and sustainable “whole.” In other words, we aspire to re-assemble the various fragmented functions/ parts of the presently disconnected fields of Project and Asset Management, so they may be ultimately linked together more rationally, into an inter-connected, integrated and better performing “whole” for the benefit of clients, end-users and the industry itself.