An Asset Owner is a person, team, branch or department within a Council (or any similar organisation) that has the overall responsibility for the executive/budget/community decisions surrounding a certain class of asset, e.g. roads, drainage, parks, buildings and land.
The asset owner is typically engages the services of other teams within the organisation (e.g. the Infrastructure Planning Team; the Capital Works Team; the Maintenance/Service team and/or the Asset Management Team) to manage the asset class through its lifecycle. The asset owner holds the budgets and commissions the work to be undertaken, they also decide when it is time for the asset to be moved on (Demolition/disposal etc).