Infrastructure asset management is a necessity and a strategic advantage for any successful business.
It enables the organization to track its assets and condition, optimizing their use to ensure longevity and continued efficiency.
Effective implementation of asset management helps companies save time and money and benefits the environment by reducing waste and unnecessary consumption and enhancing the business’s overall performance and reliability.
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) Leading Business Practices in Asset Management Case Study Report for 2017 examines leading strategies and methodologies in asset management within the water industry.
In 2015, AWWA surveyed water utilities in the U.S. on their level of progress in utility asset management, covering general asset management, the current state of the assets, service levels, risk management, maintenance and reliability, and asset planning.
The Association surveyed water utilities in the country, and 545 responded. Out of this number, the Association picked 13 leading asset management practitioners to develop a case study of each one that serves as a resource for other utilities to learn and help them improve their asset management program.
About half the respondents were utilities with less than 50,000 customers, and the report refers to them as small utilities. Smaller utilities tend to apply a different approach to asset management than their bigger counterparts.
Most of the 13 utilities selected by AWWA to develop a case study in collaboration with them excelled in applying one to three leading AM practice concepts: the current state of the assets, service levels, risk management, maintenance and reliability, and asset management planning.
13 U.S. Water Utilities led the implementation of Asset Management and their Leading Practice:
- Downers Grove Sanitary District – Current State of Assets
- Kansas City Board of Public Utilities – Current State of Assets
- Marshalltown Water Works (small utility) – Current State of Assets
- Hasting Utilities (small utility) – Current State of Assets
- San Diego Country Water Authority – Current State of Assets, Risk Management
- Portland Water Bureau – Levels of Service, Risk Management, Asset Management Planning
- Brunswick & Topsham Water District (small utility) – Levels of Service, Asset Management Planning
- City of Annapolis (small utility) – Risk Management, Asset Management Planning
- Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission – Risk Management, Asset Management Planning
- Fairfax Water – Maintenance and Reliability
- Des Moines Water Works – Maintenance and Reliability
- Livingston County Water & Sewer Authority (small utility) – Maintenance and Reliability
- Mount Pleasant Waterworks – Asset Management Planning
In this article, we highlight five case studies from the report and provide a snippet of the background of each utility, the AM practices they lead in, and how these water utilities benefitted from applying these AM practices.
Current State of Assets
The first step in managing assets is to know what assets the utility owns and in what condition they are in, hence their current state. Information about the assets should be maintained in an asset register or inventory.
Downers Grove Sanitary District ranks highest among the five utilities in the current state of assets. A geographic information system (GIS) can map the distribution of linear and vertical assets like pump stations and treatment facilities.
The District provides sewer service and wastewater treatment to 65,000 people. The district collection system comprises 252 miles of sewer, nine lift stations, and a single wastewater treatment plant constructed in 1954. Since then, it has experienced major expansion in the early 1970s and 1980s. The service area includes pipes placed as far back as 1904.
All district sewers are recorded in a GIS database and linked to a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), which requires allocating significant resources and staff to develop and manage these complex asset data.
Nick Menninga, GM of the Downers Grove Sanitary District, says they can’t imagine managing the assets without the systems and data they now have. They are better equipped to deal with the regulators and able to develop a comprehensive Capacity Management Operations and Maintenance (CMOM) Plan. Their information on manhole overflows also exceeded expectations.
Levels of Service
Water utilities’ mission is to provide service to their customers, and asset management includes setting service level goals and monitoring performance.
Portland Water Bureau provides drinking water to more than 900,000 people. Its distribution system consists of 2,330 miles of pipe, 41 pump stations, and 66 tanks with an estimated replacement value of $8 billion. The Bureau ranks very high in the Levels of Service, Risk Management, and Asset Management Planning.
In 2008, the Bureau established 27 Key Service Levels to various categories, including water quality, customer service, financial health, infrastructure management, sustainability, etc, to track its performance. The service levels also provide targets for its goals and objectives.
Jeff Leighton, Asset Management Coordinator for the Portland Water Bureau, says asset management practices have benefited the organization. “By demonstrating benefits such as avoiding high consequences of asset failure, performing more maintenance on high-consequence assets and less on low-consequence ones, and selecting alternatives that have the lowest life cycle cost, asset management as a way of doing business has become very popular with upper management and elected officials.”
Risk Management
Risk Management is considered the most important concept for managing water utility assets. Risk consists of two parts: the probability or likelihood of asset failure and the consequences of asset failure.
The City of Annapolis Department of Public Works ranks very high in their practice of Risk Management. It provides water and wastewater services to approximately 36,000 people through 12,000 water and sewer connections. The City must develop a 10-year plan for its water and sewer assets, and the Department decided to incorporate asset management.
Thora Burkhardt, the Water and Sewer Program Manager for the City of Annapolis, stated, “The consequence of failure analysis was an eye-opener and identified that we could run some pipes to failure. The risk assessment now enables us to justify projects; in the past, we had difficulty explaining why we needed to implement a project.”
Maintenance and Reliability
Advanced or proactive maintenance practices include balancing planned versus reactive maintenance and conducting more predictive maintenance on vertical facility assets. The ability to detect defects or asset failure is based on experience and data.
The use of predictive technologies, which has improved with time, helps enhance maintenance for many utilities, allowing the process to become more proactive and less reactive.
Fairfax Water ranked very high in the practice of Maintenance and Reliability. It was founded in 1957 by the Virginia State Corporation Commission as a public, non-profit water utility. It is Virginia’s largest water utility and one of the 25 largest water utilities in the country.
Fairfax Water’s maintenance program is built on the foundation of good asset information stored within and accessed from a CMMS and applying good maintenance strategies using various maintenance practices and tools.
Joe Thompson, Director of Production at Fairfax Water, stated, “Defining benefits is difficult, and not all benefits are easily quantifiable. The general feeling is that the maintenance process has gotten better; we have fewer failures with a lower cost of maintenance. Emergency call-outs have reduced significantly. Critical equipment has been identified, and it has been years since there has been a catastrophic failure.”
As the report indicates, adopting asset best management practices by the top 13 U.S. water utilities has proven crucial in delivering the promised benefits. This includes better preparedness in dealing with regulators and improved identification and prioritization of investment in high-consequence assets, leading to wiser spending of limited resources and better maintenance.
Consequently, there are fewer catastrophic failures of critical assets, ultimately enhancing the quality of life for residents, promoting economic growth, and contributing to social well-being.
Overall, the report is valuable for water utility managers, industry professionals, policymakers, and stakeholders interested in starting AM practices or enhancing their Asset Management practices.
Source:
Leading Business Practices in Asset Management Case Study Report. (2017, May). American Water Works Association. Retrieved from https://www.awwa.org/Portals/0/AWWA/ETS/Resources/LeadingBusinessPracticesAssetManagement.pdf?ver=2018-12-13-100048-417
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