Welcome to the Asset Management Page! Here you can find extensive resources for
infrastructure asset management, focused on the needs of sewer
and water agencies. Please e-mail me
with suggestions, new materials, helpful links, or any questions you
have in the AM area.
What’s
New?
Here's an interesting op-ed piece from the NY Times
titled
The Corrosion of America.
It's a rather pessimistic view of the deterioration of our underground
infrastructure, calling for urgent action -- difficult in these economic
times!
In our Experts' Corner,
Kevin Campanella, Asset Manager for Columbus Ohio's DPU, offers this
August 2010 slideshow on the
DPU's Enterprise Asset Management program. All the right
stuff plus excellent and detailed example analyses for sewer, water, and
electric assets. One of the best such presentations I've seen.
We're approaching the end of
Your Pipe Renewal CIP with the fourth part,
A Time to Build, A Time to
Renew. Here we put together a couple of things we've
already covered to arrive at (ready for this?) the optimal year to renew
a pipe.
For your consideration (thanks Rod) the
original Effective
Utility Management Practices report, sponsored by APWA, AWWA,
AMWA, NACWA, NAWC, and WEF. We
have combined all six documents associated with the report into one file
for easy download and printing. The "EUM" initiative has
gained considerable traction among wet utilities.
Jump
on down to:
General
Interest
Here are a few Brown and Caldwell resources that you may find of value.
An Asset Management Program
Evaluation is an effective and inexpensive way to get started. It yields dividends in staff education, builds enthusiasm, and
helps identify your leaders for change and improvement.
Asset Management Learning Sessions can help your agency get off on the right
foot. Forge a common vision and move ahead!
Total Asset
Management the Brown and Caldwell way. You can
integrate asset management into your business process and make it stick.
Asset Management
Series
Ken Harlow, joined by occasional co-authors, presents this series
of articles on asset management that try hard to be not too extremely
boring. Latest first.
Number 22: Concrete, Steel...and Decisions!
—
We look at what good asset decisions are based on, and there's even a
pop quiz. Don't worry, it's easy.
Number 21: Success in Asset Management: Six
Utility Managers Tell Their Stories
— Compiled by Ken Harlow and Kevin Young, these are the actual comments of
managers who are working to improve their utilities. See what's hard,
what's easier, what works and, sometimes, what doesn't. An unusual and
useful paper!
Number 20: Sustaining the Infrastructure by
Understanding Replacement Needs
—
See how a rather substantial utility
gained a commitment for funding to keep its systems up to snuff—for
the next 30 years! A must-read if the long-term condition of
your infrastructure is important to you (and I certainly hope it is).
Number 19: The Myth of Deep Pipes:
Criticality and Pipe Rehabilitation Strategies
—
This paper
explores the pitfalls of basing rehab priorities on risk or criticality alone.
If you're working on rehab strategies, as many people are these days,
then this one's for you.
Number 18: Doing Business Like a Business
—
or, Is Asset Management Really Difficult? Did you ever wonder what
the phrase "doing business like a business" really means? This
short paper explores that topic. And yes, it's
difficult, but for reasons you may not expect. An uncommon measure of
fortitude, even valor, may be required.
Number 17: Condition Assessment: Should You
Risk It? —
This rather substantial paper shows how a careful
consideration of asset risk can help you structure a condition assessment
program that makes real sense for your customers. Free bonus: Some nice photos of digester equipment!
Number 16: What's a Spill Worth?
—
Here's a survey on how much to spend on sewer spills. The survey was of
Californians, but everybody should find some good reading in this
paper. In addition to the results and analysis, it shows how to use
the preferences of your own utility's customers to determine optimal spill
reduction spending and targets.
Number 15: Is More Better? or, a Short
Visit with the DuPonts —
Here's yet another blow against our
peculiar American predilection to Assetitis Elephantiatus, with an
explanation of how a popular method of value analysis views lower costs
(good) and higher levels of asset investment (bad). No surprises perhaps,
but I think some interesting reading. Protect your customers!
Number 14: Fitting your Capital Program to
your Customers' Needs—The Business Case Evaluation — This
paper tells
how a major agency saved $20
million on the first two capital projects it examined using asset
management principles. Many thanks
to co-authors Peter Dennis of Hunter Water Australia and Ruben Robles and
Brian True of the Sacramento Regional
County Sanitation District.
Number
13: A Risky Business! — Ken Harlow
and Kevin Young explore the role of risk in asset management, and why risk
management is really a utility's main activity. Good reading if you want
to improve service levels and save money at the same time.
Number 12: Setting Customer Service Levels
3:
The Service Level/Cost Tradeoff — A final exploration of this
topic, explaining how spending more isn't always in your community's
best interests. This paper also discusses performance indicators and shows
why you may be able to improve your service levels and spend less at the
same time!
Number 11: Setting Customer Service
Levels 2: How to Start — More details and some amusing examples
of less-than-perfect attempts to set service levels.
Number 10: Setting Customer Service
Levels 1: Mind Over Matter — Hunter Water's Kevin Young teams up
again with Ken Harlow for this first in a three-part series. Be sure to
check out the other two parts as well, which have some great real-life
examples and practical how-to tips.
Number
9: Celebrating Failure — What's so great about
failure? We discuss asset failures and why
these failures represent opportunities for learning lessons about our
infrastructure that we have ignored for decades. Read on!
Number
8: Lower Costs AND Better Service!
— Hunter Water's
Kevin Young explains how his agency reduced costs dramatically
while improving service levels. Hunter Water is, of course,
well-known in asset management circles. This is the most
complete description I have seen of how they did
what they did. Worth a careful reading!
Number
7: Do YOU have an Asset Management Plan?
— Ken Harlow is joined by
Marsi Steirer and Joe Harris of the City of San Diego, and Steve Allbee of
the EPA on this one, explaining why we need an Asset Management
Institute. One reason? Well, if the government decides to to help us with
asset management, and it may be our only defense!
Number
6: Assets and Allergies — The evils of assets (or at least the
over-investment in same), along with suggestions on how to reduce not only
your current capital budget, but future operating and capital budgets as
well. Would you like to propose a rate decrease? Really,
would you?
Number
5: Asset Management War Stories — Ken Harlow and Hunter Water's
Kevin Young get together to explore how AM helps agencies make
business-based asset decisions. Real cases, real numbers. Risk-based analysis can help you do the right thing!
Number 4: Customers, Criticality, and Cash — We explore the
relationships between your AM program's intensity (and cost) and the
needs of your customers. Getting down to the bedrock of asset
management here...
Number 3: Asset Management and the
Almighty Dollar — All about the dollar savings available
from better asset management, which we're going to need as our
infrastructure replacement costs mount up.
Number
2: GASB 34, an Infrastructure Heresy
— A refresher on
GASB 34's infrastructure reporting requirements and a possible
"optimal" compliance path.
Number
1: Asset Management Manifesto — A very short
paper outlining what water and wastewater utility managers
have to do to sustain their infrastructures.
Your Pipe
Renewal CIP
Your pipes are probably the highest-value part of your system
and in some ways the most difficult to deal with. This short series of
papers describes an approach to building and maintaining a solid and
economical renewal CIP for your pipes based entirely on community value.
It's not necessarily easy, but your customers will find the rewards worth it.
Introduction:
Read this first! Find out where we're going to go and why. Also read
some "fair warnings" of difficulties we'll likely encounter on the road.
It's all here in the aptly-titled
An Introduction.
Part 1:
The first step is to realize that it's not all a question of risk. Like
all else in asset management, "community value" needs to consider cost
also. So the benefit/cost analysis is the focus as we get started with
Beyond the Matrix.
Part 2: We
introduce present value analysis to our "problem pipe" issue and lay the
groundwork for things to come. Hope you enjoy
The Sands of Time.
Part 3:
Just how likely is our problem pipe to fail? When? How can we deal with
our uncertainty? We'll get a bit "hands-on" here, and it'll be worth it.
So let's move ahead with
Throwing a Curve.
Part 4: With all the work we've done so far,
is it possible that we've stumbled onto the secret of figuring out just
when to renew a pipe? Find out in
A Time to Build, A Time to Renew.
Part 5: The last part of the series! After we
renew a pipe, what then? Are our problems gone? Find out in
We Fixed our Problem, Where did it Go?
Experts' Corner
Here are some offerings from asset management experts both here and abroad.
You will find their thoughts and experiences helpful as you work to
develop more effective practices in your own utility.
Kevin Campanella, Asset Manager for Columbus Ohio's DPU, offers this
August 2010 slideshow on the
DPU's Enterprise Asset Management program. All the right
stuff plus excellent and detailed example analyses for sewer, water, and
electric assets. One of the best such presentations I've seen.
Offered by the always witty and urbane
urbane Kevin Young of Hunter Water in Australia. The title is worth
quoting in full: Attacking
Business as Usual; or, Why Sacred Cows Make the Best Utility Burgers.
'Nuff said!
John Fortin, formerly of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, tells us all about MWRA's
Facility Asset Management Program. Interesting reading about an
AM program that started with a maintenance orientation and is now
moving into the capital side of asset management. Thanks for
sharing, John!
Brown and
Caldwell's CEO Craig Goehring writes that Business
Improvement Starts and Ends with the Customer. Wait a moment:
Our CEO is writing asset management stuff? Guess I'm not surprised.
A reprint of an older article by Dr. Penny Burns of
Australia's AMQ International. Dr. Burns tells
of her observations of asset management right here in the USA a few
years ago—thus my title Asset Management in
the USA: Two Years On. Not a very complimentary picture at that
time, but we've certainly had the interim to improve. And we have. Haven't
we?
Kevin Young is
back with Not Drowning in Data: Swimming
Through it. Kevin tells us how to get by in asset management
with only limited data and points the way to better data in the future.
Craig Goehring again, suggesting that we
can
Create
Visibility with Asset Management as a way to make infrastructure visible to the
public and promote sustainability.
Elizabeth Kelly, Director of Corporate Asset Management at Seattle
Public Utilities, explains What's so
Different about Australian Asset Management? She writes about
how they do AM down under and discusses the direction SPU is moving.
Lots of good information about organizational structure,
accountability, and significant savings. A must read!
Richard G. Little, Director of The Keston Institute
for Infrastructure School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the
Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California tells us Why
Infrastructure Matters. He points out some basic truths that we
(and our communities) would do well to remember.
A
slideshow showing how Seattle Public
Utilities is applying classical probability-consequence risk analysis to
its pumping stations, leading to optimized maintenance and replacement
strategies. A great example of real-life risk work, looking at
not only the pump stations but their key assets. This presentation was
prepared by Terry Martin and Neil Thibert of SPU along with Mike O'Neal
and Jack Warburton of Brown and Caldwell in Seattle.
Again from Terry Martin and crew at
Seattle Public Utilities comes this Mainline
Sewer Pipe Maintenance/Rehabilitation Strategy, a fully-costed
triple bottom line analysis leading to a
least-cost approach for the community of Seattle to manage its aging
sewers. Anybody interested in finding the optimal collection system
management strategy should read this.
Kevin Young holds forth on Setting Service Levels: A Simple Task or a
Major Challenge in Asset Management? Some interesting
perspectives on one of the fundamental elements of asset management.
Asset
Management: An Australian Perspective
— Kevin Young again, offering some very good
information on AM as practiced at his own Hunter Water. Well worth reviewing!
Australian
Water Industry: Infrastructure, A Reform Agenda —
The EPA's Steve Allbee offers this slideshow
reprising his fact-finding trip to Australia and his investigations of
asset management practices in the water industry there. It'll take a
while to absorb all this, but you'll be glad you did.
Funding Asset
Replacements
Replacing aging infrastructure is a
significant challenge for many agencies. The key is formulating
sound long-term funding policies—before it's too late. The first two items, by Ken Harlow and Dan Ferons, present an advanced and effective
approach that has been used by many of Brown and
Caldwell's clients.
It works.
Sustaining the Infrastructure by
Understanding Replacement Needs.
See how a rather substantial utility
gained a commitment for funding to keep its systems up to snuff—for
the next 30 years! A detailed must-read if the long-term condition of
your infrastructure is important to you (and I certainly hope it is).
Understand Infrastructure R&R
Needs—and Funding Them! Here's a slideshow that's meant to
go with the paper directly above.
Asset
Management: A Guide for Small Water Systems, the EPA's
"asset management lite." While not a true programmatic approach,
this booklet aims to help small systems determine and fund asset
replacement needs. Well, that's more than many large systems are doing. Check it out!
Condition
Assessment
Asset management? Well, you probably
want to do some condition assessment. Here are some items that may help.
From the EPA, a State of Technology
Review Report on
Condition Assessment of Wastewater Collection Systems. This
beefy 74-page tome is a must-have and must-read for anyone involved in
wastewater pipe CA.
Here's the companion to the above:
Rehabilitation of Wastewater Collection and Water Distribution
Systems. 91 pages this time and a lot of good
information.
Want to assess your pipe but not sure where to
start? The SCRAPS
Methodology helps you set up a program without popping
a manhole. Easy, fast, and smart!
More interested in CA of plants or pumping stations? Condition
Assessment: Should You Risk It? has the latest thinking on how a
careful consideration of asset risk can help you structure a condition
assessment program that makes real sense for your customers. Free bonus: Some nice photos of digester equipment!
Other Resources
Here are a few resources from
various places.
All are of interest.
The
original Effective
Utility Management Practices report, sponsored by APWA, AWWA,
AMWA, NACWA, NAWC, and WEF. We
have combined all six documents associated with the report into one file
for easy download and printing. The "EUM" initiative has
gained considerable traction among wet utilities.
A fascinating print article by Terry Martin about how Seattle
revamped its sewer CCTV program. Using asset management
benefit/cost principles, it risk-mapped its pipe systems—with startling
results!.
EPA's Fact
Sheet on Asset Management for Sewer Collection Systems. This
document is lengthy and interesting, but somewhat general. It
dances around the issue of service levels (as you might expect). It
does discuss the relationships between asset management and CMOM.
The Total Asset Management manual
from New South Wales in Australia weighs in at 392 pages. Chances are
that what you need to know is in there...somewhere. A bit deficient in the
table of contents area, but loaded with asset management wisdom!
A History
of "The Gap"
10 years ago several reports appeared addressing
our nation's water and wastewater infrastructure needs. These
reports, promoting major federal spending, got a lot of attention because of the
startling
cost estimates they put forward. To some extent they
kick-started the ongoing effort to improve asset management
practices here. But little federal funding was forthcoming, and
the original concerns remain
with us today. I have archived the most significant reports
here.
Here's the original
WIN Report
—
Clean
and Safe Water for the 21st Century
from the
Water Infrastructure Network.
It showed a half-trillion dollar "gap" in water and sewer
replacement funding over the next 20 years. Here's also a
supporting paper on "the gap" from the EPA's Steve Allbee,
Project Director, Gap Analysis. (April 2000)
The
Follow-up WIN Report
and its
press release
—
". . .the network calls for a five-year, $57 billion federal
investment in drinking water, sewer, and stormwater infrastructure to
replace aging pipes, upgrade treatment systems, and continue to protect
public health and the environment. The report also urges Congress to
create a long-term, sustainable, and reliable source of federal funding
for clean and safe water." (February 2001).
The AWWA's
report
Dawn
of the Replacement Era
— This major report concentrated on main replacements, $250 billion
worth. The report found that our infrastructure's demographics showed a huge and rising need
for replacements and called for far better financial
planning. Here's
AWWA's press release. (May 2001)
The EPA's
Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis
— This report again analyzed the 20-year
"gap" in funding for infrastructure, with the accent on replacement
of aging assets. See also EPA's
fact sheet on
this report. (September 2002)
The CBO's
Report on Infrastructure Funding
— The Congressional Budget
Office prepared this "official" estimate of water and wastewater
infrastructure needs. It offered a broad range of estimates, with the
WIN numbers near the top of the range. The overall tone seemed negative
re federal funding
—
"...distort prices and thus
undermine incentives for cost-effective actions by water systems and
ratepayers..." (May 2002)
Steve Allbee remains a tireless advocate for our
infrastructure even today. Here's The
Gap in Water and Wastewater Infrastructure and the Changing Face of Water
Utility Management. Presented to the Canadian
Ministry of the Environment in Toronto, this is chock full of good stuff
on asset management. (May 2003)
Old Stuff
I can't seem to throw anything away! Some of this may be of interest...to
somebody...somewhere...
May 2006: The EPA along with WEF, NACWA, AWWA, AMWA,
APWA, and NAWC announced a statement
of intent to ensure the long-term viability of our nation's water
systems to promote effective utility management. The formal partnership
will focus on improved water and wastewater utility performance through
education, management tools and performance measures. Over the next 12
months, EPA and the associations will work with utilities to identify the
key attributes of sustainable management. They also will develop measures
to use in gauging utility effectiveness, and develop a strategy to promote
widespread adoption of sustainable management practices across the water
sector.
July 2006: An interesting memorandum understanding between USEPA and the
Department of Transportation, titled Infrastructure
Asset Management Technology Exchange. Definitely a good idea,
although it's a bit surprising (isn't it?) that two parts of the same
government need a formal agreement to work together...
March 2004:
Here's the GAO report on asset
management. This report, supposedly advising Senator
Jeffords on how to help utilities improve AM, concentrates on the
"capital" side of AM and stays away from difficult issues—such as Sen. Jefford's own efforts to tie better AM to eligibility for SRF
funding. Interesting perspectives from several US utilities are included.
1999:
USDOT
Treatise on Asset Management — Pretty general but perhaps useful
nonetheless.
Asset
Management Links Some
links to other pages with asset management information.
Sustainable
Infrastructure for Water and Wastewater from the EPA. Several pages link from
this master page, one of special interest being Water and Wastewater
Pricing, which endorses "full cost pricing" as a key avenue
to infrastructure sustainability.
NAMS
(New Zealand)
— You can order the International Infrastructure
Management Manual here, and some other good manuals as well.
AMQ
International hails from down
under, where many good asset management ideas continue to originate. Lots
of links to discussions, tools, even our own humble asset management page.
Journal of
Infrastructure Systems — An excellent source of
information on "methodologies for monitoring, evaluating,
expanding, repairing, replacing, financing, or otherwise
sustaining the civil infrastructure."
Institute for
Research in Construction — This Canadian site
includes links to an "Urban Infrastructure Program" and an "NRC
Centre for Sustainable
Infrastructure Research."
I will add more links as they turn up. If you have good links
or other resources of general interest, please e-mail them to me!
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