Condition assessments
Record asset condition over time and let AssetLab project degradation - the data that powers risk, FCI, and defensible capital plans.
A condition assessment is a dated, sourced statement of how an asset is doing. One rating is a snapshot; a series is a trend line - and trend lines are what turn "we think the boiler is getting worse" into a capital plan a council or board will fund.
The condition scale
Condition is scored 0-100, and every screen that shows a grade uses the same bands:
| Grade | Score |
|---|---|
| Excellent | 85-100 |
| Good | 70-84 |
| Fair | 55-69 |
| Poor | 40-54 |
| Critical | 0-39 |
| Unscored | no score recorded |
The same bands apply to infrastructure features, including the map's condition colouring. A feature or asset with no score recorded is Unscored - it is not counted as Critical, and it is not silently left out of the totals.
Recording an assessment
From the asset page's Condition Assessments section, add an assessment with:
- Assessment date - when it was observed, not when it was typed in. It cannot be in the future
- Condition score - the rating on your scale
- Replacement cost - the asset's current replacement value as observed
- Update purchase cost - an opt-in checkbox; see below
- Assessor - picked from your organization's users
- Method - chosen from a fixed list (how the condition was established)
- Notes - the evidence behind the number
To attach photos, use the asset's documents instead - the assessment record itself doesn't carry attachments.
If the score jumps, you'll be asked about the money
A condition score tells you the asset got better. It cannot tell you whether that happened because someone spent money on it. So when a score rises sharply - 15 points or more over the last one on record, or a first score of Good or better on an asset already past its service life - the form offers to record a betterment alongside the assessment.
Tick it and you add the capital amount and the years of life the work bought. Skip it and nothing changes: the assessment saves on its own, as always.
Both can set the asset's condition score, and the most recently dated one wins. An assessment you record today takes over from a betterment dated last month, and a betterment dated after your last assessment takes over from it. Where a score looks wrong, that rule tells you which record to open.
Assessments build a dated history, and they stay editable: an entry can be corrected or deleted after the fact. Whenever an assessment is added, edited, or deleted, the asset's condition score re-syncs to its latest assessment automatically.
What an assessment writes
An assessment can do more than record a number:
- Its replacement cost documents the observed current replacement value.
- With the update purchase cost opt-in checked, that value overwrites the asset's purchase cost - the previous figure is stashed on the assessment as its prior purchase cost, so nothing is silently lost.
- Both the condition sync and the purchase-cost writeback fire risk history capture, so the risk trend reflects the change.
Where assessments come from
- Manual entry on the asset page
- Inspection forms completed during PM work orders
- Consultant studies brought in via import
- The API and MCP tools (
create_asset_condition_assessment)
Degradation projection
With an assessment history (or even one rating plus an installation date), AssetLab projects the asset's condition forward using its expected useful life - a degradation curve from current condition toward end of life. The projection shows:
- Estimated condition today, even between assessments
- Projected year the asset crosses your intervention threshold
- How new assessments bend the curve - a rebuild that improves condition pushes the projected replacement out; accelerated wear pulls it in
The projection only ever declines from the latest assessment dated today or earlier - condition does not improve on its own, only a new assessment or betterment raises it.
Projections are estimates, and they're labeled as such. Their job is triage: with ten thousand assets, nobody re-inspects everything annually - the curve tells you where to look.
What condition data feeds
| Consumer | How it uses condition |
|---|---|
| Risk scores | Condition drives likelihood-of-failure |
| FCI | Deficiency costs over replacement value, rolled up by building and system |
| Replacement planner | Prioritizes candidates by condition and risk, not just age |
| Dashboards | Portfolio condition distribution and trend |
| Infrastructure inspections | The linear-asset equivalent, same idea per feature |
Program advice
- Start with critical systems - life safety, ice plants, boilers, roofs. Breadth can wait; criticality can't.
- Use one scale consistently. Whatever your scale, write down what each rating means and put it in front of assessors.
- Date honestly. Backdate imported consultant data to the study date, or your trend lines lie.
Assessments AssetLab offers to record for you
Two flows propose an assessment rather than writing condition behind your back, because assessments are the only author of an asset's condition:
- Completing intervention work. A work order created from a lifecycle strategy's due-interventions list offers the outcome its event models ("resets condition to 70") when you close it, pre-filled per asset for you to confirm or correct.
- Closing out a project. The project closeout dialog's "reset condition" options record an assessment of 100 per associated asset, noting the project by name, instead of silently overwriting the stored score.
Both land in the asset's assessment history like any other, and the projection re-anchors from them.