Relationships and linear assets

The product supports two types of relationships: hierarchical relationships and user-defined relationships. A user-defined relationship uses basic terms, such as intersects, or contains to describe the dependency or connectivity between assets.

With a hierarchical relationship, a location can be the parent of other locations or of assets, and an asset can be the parents of other assets. With user-defined relationships, you can create relationships that establish a contextual link between related assets. User-defined relationships reflect the associations between assets and locations in networks, where objects contain, connect to, or are dependent on other objects. User-defined relationships can be used in conjunction with hierarchical relationships.

You can configure user-defined relationships to establish the contextual relationships between the components of a linear asset. If a railroad worker must perform some work on a railroad track at mile point 47, you can use relationships to see what else is located on this span of track that may impact the work.

You define and work with relationships in these ways:

• In the Relationships application, you create the formal definitions and accompanying rules for relationships.
• In the Relationships tab of the Assets application, you associate relationships with assets. The tab lists only user-defined relationships and does not list any hierarchical relationships.

If you use a GIS application that provides geographical context or a schematic viewer that provides operational context, user-defined relationships may be unnecessary for your business processes. User-defined relationships are provided for business that are not using such applications, or that want the additional value in defining operational context within the product.

You can configure user-defined relationships for use in conjunction with traditional hierarchies, because assets still have financial or organizational context. A linear asset must reside within a single location to use it with a traditional hierarchy. If you have a linear asset that spans multiple work sites, you can either segment that asset and place each segment in a different site, or you can place the asset in a single site, and use the Repair Facility functionality to allow teams from other sites to work on the linear asset. The cost of the work is still charged to the asset, but the work history shows that the work was conducted in another site.