Asset Management Manual for Smaller to Mid-sized Water Utilities

A participant expressed:

I’ve seen many guides to asset management. Many of which are very similar to others. Is there one guide, internationally or nationally, that is usually seen as the model for asset management? And if not, what are two or three of the most commonly used guides, domestically and internationally, particularly for small systems?

AM Kan Work!

Heather said:

Well, I guess it’s a shameless plug. But the Environmental Finance Center – our center – wrote the “AM Kan Work!” and that was meant to be for smaller to mid-sized utilities.

Anybody can really use it but it was geared more for smaller to medium-sized utilities.

And we were trying to be offering different possibilities for different-sized utilities and the whole thought behind the manual was that it was more focused on the thinking part and not a prescriptive, you know, fill in the blanks and you’ll have a plan. It was more guiding people through the thought processes.

We do have that manual available to anybody who wants it for free. We were very lucky that the state of Kansas who paid for its development agreed to allow us to make it available.

That was very generous of them to do so. So we can send you a link to that manual after this webinar and you can access it online.

Again, so that was something nationally that’s used, and I know there are a lot of different places using the manual. New Mexico is using it as sort of a guide to how asset management is going to be done here.

Kansas, of course, is using it. Many other states are but it is not Kansas-specific. It’s very generic for anybody who is doing asset management. It kind of just helps you.

And there’s also a lot of videos from other organizations who are doing asset management and actually Ross is featured in a couple of the videos. When he was here before, we filmed him.

So there’s a lot of good information in there. So on the national side, that’s one I can mention, you know, that is the guide for infrastructure asset management.

And then Ross can speak on the international side.

Ross:

Well, I could– I suggest that you have a look at the guide – the Kansas one that Heather’s written. I think it’s a really good guide for small systems, and this is very clear and easy to use guidance sheets and information in the back of it that if you started with that, you’d go a long way down the track.

International Infrastructure Management Manual

Out of Australasia, there’s the International Infrastructure Management Manual, which is more of a toolkit.

So it has a whole lot of discussion and ideas and case studies around different tools for the different components of asset management.

That’s a very, very good overall guide.

Based on Australia and New Zealand, you know, we’ve got practice guides across a range of asset management topics and some detailed guides but then they tend to be a little bit more specific to the practice that we have over there.  These are all available from IPWEA.

ISO 55000

Just in February (2014), there’s the ISO 55000 series of standards that have come out for asset management. They’re not going to tell you how to write an asset management plan or do your asset management though.

If you know ISO 9000 or 14000 by management standards, and 55000 is along the same vein.

So they’re quite a high level and they set a framework as opposed to a lot of specifics and they have a whole lot of — I think there’s like 70 or 80 “You shall” type of statements in there.

So if you’re doing asset management you shall do this, this and this.

If you do like using international standards, that’s just out and this can be quite useful, I think, particularly for larger authorities. With ISO, of course, you can get an accredited assessment that says you made the standard.

It is a big process and costs a lot of money, so is more suitable for quite large utilities.

But I think – in Australasia particularly – there are larger utilities who’d probably go down that track just because they’ve already got ISO 9000 or 14000-type certification and it is part of their business process practice for a large organization.

A more formalized documented system, one of quality assurance and other practices like that. I don’t know that’s particularly appropriate for smaller systems, but it’s just to be aware that ISO 55000 it’s out there.

You may have heard of PAS 55 which is a UK standard. Well, that was the precursor to ISO 55000. So if you know PAS 55 then that’s become superseded in the last few months.

That would be the main one. I think, to be honest, start with the “AM Kan Work” by the Environmental Finance Center is a pretty good set of tools and guidelines to get you started.

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