The first book ever written on Maintenance or Physical Asset Management: ”De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae” (On the aqueducts of the city of Rome), was written in AD 97 by Sextius Julius Frontinus, Curator of the Waters of the city of Rome. This top-level civil servant was appointed by the Emperor Nerva to restore the water network of Rome, which suffered quite a lot from mismanagement during the Emperor Domitian era (who used to put in his own pocket the fees paid by the Roman citizen for the water service), and from a dire shortage of water.

This network was important, even when compared to more modern figures: 500 000 cubic meters per day, fed by 9 aqueducts (including the ”Virgo” aqueduct, founded by Agrippa in 19 BC, that is still in use to feed the Trevi fountain in Roma), 4 of them being 80 kilometres long. To restore this network, Frontinus discovered and implemented all the basic principles of modern maintenance that he describes in his book (site visits, technical documentation, standardization, daily meetings, work preparation, contracted maintenance, quality inspection, preventive maintenance, overhauls of aqueducts... and accounting).

He was very proud to notice that, due to his action, the shortage of water was over without the need for a foreseen additional aqueduct. Not only that, the resulting surplus of water enabled the flushing of the sewage network of Rome, and consequently definitely removed the bad smell making the Trastevere low quarter of Rome stink.

Most interesting of all is the beginning of the book, where Frontinus explains the basic principle of his action: facing such a high responsibility ”I consider it my first and most important duty to have full knowledge of what I have to undertake” (Primum ac potissimum existimo... nosse quod suscepi). He viewed such knowledge as the best tool to help him make the right decisions at the right time, and to enable him to effectively drive his subordinates. Then he immediately started to visit by himself the entire network, discovering with his own eyes the situation: ducts in a poor state, overflows and the spillage of water, and mainly countless holes (”puncti”) in water ducts intentionally made to illegally steal water, and unpaid workers doing moonlight jobs.

His first decision was to obtain from Nerva the return of fees to the needs of the network; the second to establish maps and drawings of the network (cf XVII 4: ”to enable me to see the situation from my office as if I were at site”); the third to establish a daily maintenance meeting. He used to make sudden unexpected inspections to watch the behaviour of the Operation & Maintenance staff, and managed to implement edicts by the Roman Senate to punish with fantastic fines (100.000 sestercii!) the illegal stealing of water, or to make mandatory the removal of trees in the vicinity of the aqueducts pillars, that were mined by the under-ground growth of their roots (a true proactive maintenance)... 

Gerard Neyret

The author has been the Chair of Health and Safety Committee, EFNMS