Infrastructure Asset Management Lessons from AWWA Conference

This year in Austin, Texas, the AWWA and WEF held a Utility Management Conference.

During this conference, the AWWA Knowledge Management Subcommittee of the Workforce Strategies Committee and the AWWA Asset Management Committee partnered to show how the two can be integrated to support business decisions.

The idea of the session was to get utility managers from across the U.S. and Canada to demonstrate the business value of treating knowledge as an asset – put forward by Kurt Vause, PE, Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility Engineering Division Director and Sharon Jean-Baptiste, PE, CH2M Senior Project Manager.

Water Online reports:

“Several utility case studies were shared with the audience, including:

• Application of the Effective Utility Management (EUM) approach and use of benchmarking tools at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority to conduct a gap analysis on knowledge management systems.
• How the communities of Englewood-Littleton in Colorado leveraged data and knowledge from its Information Management Systems, such as InfoNet, Infor, and GIS to better understand and proactively pursue long-term operations and management needs of its asset classes.
• The ongoing journey of the joint utility of the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati and Greater Cincinnati Water Works in strategically identifying, developing, or hiring people with the skills and competencies necessary to run a utility of the future and plan for succession.
• How Anchorage Water & Wastewater Utility, while undergoing a rapid, complete replacement of key staff, utilized a risk-based asset and knowledge management approach to continue to meet its core mission.

Complimenting these case studies were interactive group exercises that allowed attendees to discuss their experiences around EUM maturity, Information System tools, succession planning approaches and best practices for identifying and addressing risks to sustained business and operations.

Key takeaways from the workshop included:

• Knowledge retention is emerging as a key business driver for utilities. This requires utilities to take stock of the organization’s current accomplishments and capabilities around comprehensive asset and business management;
• Based on the assessment of risk to the organization, selecting, prioritizing and focusing on business practices to develop or improve operations effectiveness; and
• Leveraging the network of other utility organizations to learn and advance your program — you are not alone!”

All those who attended the workshop will have benefitted greatly from the wisdom shared, hopefully, to go back to their utilities and put knowledge into practice to better serve those relying on the utilities.

Capturing, retaining, and enhancing knowledge about your utility is a core component of infrastructure asset management.  

Inframanage.com encourages readers to review their own asset management practice and ensure this is covered sufficiently.