Ross:
And Heather look one of the things we’ve found here that are very easy when you’re a small system to look at a 200 or 300-page asset management plan that’s being produced by LA or New York or a major system.
And that’s just ridiculous. We can’t do that and the sure answer is you don’t need to do that.
I’m just thinking about that asset plan that you sent me a copy of from a really little town New Mexico that had a voluntary custodian who was in the in his 70s I think. I was really impressed with him.
And he’d written a 15-pages asset plan. He had a one-page asset register that was typed in the appendix at the back.
The plan used your Kansas model that you’ve developed and it was just scaled really appropriately for the really small system who had a voluntary custodian.
Heather:
Yeah, I think this particular community was having some issues and they really wanted to get the system in better shape and they’re very, very small community.
And so, they really set about, what level of expertise they could have in the community.
And they actually started it on a piece of paper because that was the level at which they were comfortable.
We told them because you don’t have a lot of assets that’s a perfectly fine way to start because that gives you the comfort level that you need to get going.
And it’s okay if it does not get into the computer until later, you’re only starting. So he was starting through, you know going through his pipes, his wells, his tanks.
Again, a small system so there wasn’t a lot of assets and then they just slowly walk through the whole process of ok we’ve done inventory, we’ll do a level of service, we’ll do criticality.
And again in a small system, there aren’t a lot of components so they could really structure those asset management plans to very quickly get to the heart of their issues and they were able to come up with 15 or 20 pages,
They were able to really sum up the whole process and what they needed to do. And I don’t really feel like asset management plans need to have a lot of the theory behind us in management because that’s available.
There are thousands of different publications out there so you don’t really need a lot of that in your plan. You can cut right to the chase, we have this much pipe, we this many pumps, we have this many wells.
Here in the back Appendix whatever A has a list of our infrastructure or if you want to refer to a computer program, you know here’s the kind of data we collect, here’s how we collect it.
And so you can be really cut and dry with the process. It does not have to have lots of complex, you know graphs and figures and charts.
It can be very, very simple and I think that it needs to fit the level of sophistication of the people who are going to use it and fit their culture.
It doesn’t really do a lot of good to give people grandiose graphs and charts that they don’t feel comfortable using.
So I feel like the plan should really be, you know what feels comfortable to me, how can I use these data going forward and if I can do it in 15 pages then 15 pages are plenty.
If you don’t need more unless you have more to say that’s really valuable to you. You don’t have to spend a hundred pages talking about all the theory behind us at management.
You can just talk about:
- here’s what you’re going to do going forward,
- here’s how we’re managing now,
- here’s level of service,
- here’s ways we’re going to measure it.
An asset management plan can be really cut and dry and keep it very, very simple at the level of what the community feels comfortable.
PHOTO CREDIT: Reine – Lofoten Norway by Karl Hipolito. The photo was used with permission from the owner. It has been cropped to suit the size requirement of the website.
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