By Shane Brunker - NM Group Technical Director I posed the above headline question on the (Physical) Asset Management forum this week, with the following background: "I was at the Energy Networks Association (ENA) conference in Adelaide (Australia) a few weeks back and one of the committee leads did a talk which I thought raised really interesting questions. The safe clearance envelope around the conductor ensures that vegetation and hard objects do not get within flashover or impact distance, to ensure the safety and reliability of the line. The fellow from ENA made the point that even though this space is literally empty (or is just air to be perfectly accurate) it should be treated as an asset not only so that it gets the right attention, but because you can then apply an asset management framework to the way it is managed - giving access to benchmarking and performance tools used elsewhere in asset management." My opinion is that because you can digitally define the clearance envelope, and this is essentially a big insulator, treating it as an asset is quite a good idea. It takes it from being an intangible and difficult to define concept to a defined 3D space. This would enable the full power of asset management systems (SAP, Maximo, etc.) to be targeted towards managing the risk and the costs. How to achieve this? First map the asset like you would any other - through CAD/GIS (based on LiDAR or line models) and then set the relevant asset IDs, hierarchy and links to integrate it to the enterprise asset management system. Easy right?