Melbourne – The Capital Investment Playbook – Building Defensible Business Cases

12pm (for 12.15pm start) – 1.15pm

Every asset management leader has experienced it.

The condition data is solid.

The risk is real.

The numbers stack up.

And yet the funding request stalls, gets deferred, or comes back with questions that have nothing to do with the engineering.

This is not a data problem. It is a framing problem.
In this session, Shane Scriven walks through SAS-AM’s Capital Investment Playbook. First published in the AMC Journal March 2026. Attendees will learn how Boards actually read papers, what each of the five director archetypes is looking for, and how to anchor an asset management proposal to an existing Risk Appetite Statement.

The session covers five repeatable plays, from deferred maintenance through to decarbonisation and capability uplift, and gives everyone a portable mental model they can take into the next business case cycle.

You will leave with:

• A seven-block structure for any Board paper
• A translation layer from engineering KPIs to clinical outcomes
• A pre mortem template you can run with your team this week
• Five reusable Plays

Shane Scriven is the founder and Managing Director of SAS Asset Management, an Australian advisory and analytics firm that helps asset owners across health, transport, resources and the public sector turn engineering knowledge into defensible investment decisions. He has spent two decades working with operators of complex, high consequence assets, and has personally led capital business cases through Treasury gates, executive committees, and Boards of Directors. Shane writes and speaks regularly on asset investment strategy, decision quality, and the persistent gap between technical evidence and the way leadership groups approve funding.