What’s new?

Somewhat late (but never too late) we bring you the Effective Utility Management Practices report, sponsored by APWA, AWWA, AMWA, NACWA, NAWC, and (as our final helping of alphabet soup) WEF. We have combined all six documents associated with the report into one file for easy download and printing. Some good stuff here, especially a nice section on performance measures.

After a long hiatus, we have number 21 in the Asset Management Series, 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!

Here's number 20 in the Asset Management Series, 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).

Here's 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...

Here are news items and resources that you may find of interest and value.

More than just alphabet soup? The EPA along with WEF, NACWA, AWWA, AMWA, APWA, and NAWC have 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.

Is a National Center for Utility Management in our future? If so, asset management will be a centerpiece of its activities. It is proposed in a bill currently before the House, funded at $5 million a year. This possibly arises from an initiative proposed at a major asset management shindig last year. We'll keep you informed as (and if) this develops further! You can see the full text of the bill, the Clean Water Trust Fund Act of 2005, here.

The 2006 Edition of the International Infrastructure Management Manual has just been published. This is a significant update to the 2002 edition reflecting the latest in asset management theory and best practice from around the world. Also included are numerous new case studies from the USA, and Canada, and a specific US section detailing current developments in asset management. The Manual is now available from a US source, AMSNA, or as always through the NAMS NZ website.

Asset management people are always asking, "Why? What are the benefits compared with the costs?"  I ran across this article on $10 billion in sewer improvements in Pennsylvania that asks just these questions. The article is definitely an editorial with a point of view, and I don't know how the "opposition" would respond to its arguments. However, the questions raised have a definite asset management flavor, especially with regard to the impacts of overflows and the very high costs of preventing them. These are definitely the kinds of questions that utilities should be asking themselves when they are spending their communities' money.

Here's a fascinating article about how Seattle revamped its sewer CCTV program. Using asset management benefit/cost principles, it risk-mapped its pipe systems -- with startling results! You can see the upshot by reading only the last paragraph. The rest of the article explains how the results were achieved.

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.

An Asset Management workshop can help your agency get off on the right foot.  Find your AM leaders, forge a common vision, and then move ahead.

Here it is, Total Asset Management the Brown and Caldwell way.  Based on the proven Australasian approach,  you can integrate asset management into your business process and make it stick!

  See how Brown and Caldwell's approach to asset management helped save the Regional Water Authority of Asheville, Buncombe, and Henderson in North Carolina $10 million in capital investment and $1 million annually in operational costs. Not to mention helping sustain the infrastructure through use of the Replacement Planning Model!

Condition Assessment

Asset management -- sounds easy? You probably want to do some condition assessment, of course. Here are a few items that may help.

Check out this pretty substantial paper for the latest thinking on how a careful consideration of asset risk can help you structure a condition assessment program that makes economic sense. The title: Condition Assessment: Should You Risk It? Many thanks to co-author Doug Stewart, who heads up asset management at the Orange County Sanitation District. Free bonus: Some nice photos of digester equipment!

Sewer pipe assessment a la Brown and Caldwell.  A comprehensive, automated approach used by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.  Slick.  Oval brick, anyone?

More interested in plant equipment?  Here's the R2D2 Assessment Model that makes short work of determining remaining life and refurbishment needs for rotating and electrical equipment.

More pipe stuff!  Here's how Phoenix built a prioritized CIP for its pipe systems.

Want to assess your pipe but not sure where to start?  The SCRAPS Methodology sets up a program for you without popping a manhole.  Easy, fast, and smart!

Asset Management Series

Ken Harlow (and occasionally others) present this new series of articles on asset management that start up about where the Water Online articles leave off.

Part 1: Asset Management Manifesto — A very short paper outlining what water and wastewater utility managers have to do to sustain their infrastructures.

Part 2: GASB 34, an Infrastructure Heresy — A refresh on GASB 34's infrastructure reporting requirements and a possible "optimal" compliance path.

Part 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 (see the Infrastructure Funding page.)

Part 4: Customers, Criticality, and Cash —  We explore the relationships between your AM program's intensity (and cost) and the desires of your customers.  Getting down to the bedrock of asset management here...

Part 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!

Part 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 have a rate decrease?  Really, would you?

Part 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, the government is here to help us with asset management, and it may be our only defense!  Also on our Infrastructure Funding page.

Part 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!

 Part 9: Celebrating Failure  — What's so great about failure? Ken Harlow discusses asset failures here and why these failures represent opportunities for learning about our infrastructure that we have ignored for decades. Read on!

 Part 10: Setting Customer Service Levels: Mind Over Matter — Hunter Water's Kevin Young teams up again with BC's Ken Harlow for this first in a three-part series. Stay tuned for the remaining two parts, which have some great real-life examples and practical how-to tips.

  Number 6: 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!

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.  These items, by Ken Harlow, present an advanced and effective approach that has already been used by some of Brown and Caldwell's most sophisticated clients.

  From the EPA: Asset Management: A Guide for Small Water Systems, which is really "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!

Planning for and Funding Asset Replacements and Refurbishments: “Making Do” with Limited Asset Knowledge — This is a presentation from the CWEA Asset Management Seminar in Berkeley CA on September 17, 2003.  Helpful if you are considering how to use your existing asset inventory to support long-range R&R forecasting and formulating funding policy for system sustainability.

Establishing Replacement Reserves — An excellent approach to defining how much you should set aside for infrastructure asset replacement.  Paper presented at WEFTEC 2000 by Brown and Caldwell's Ken Harlow and co-author Andrew Czorny, Associate GM and CFO of Orange County Water District

Replacement Funding: One Agency's Approach — PowerPoint slideshow based on the above paper, presented at WEFTEC 2000 in Anaheim on October 18, 2000.

Other Resources

Here's a collection of resources from various places, latest first.

More from the EPA, this time a set of web pages titled Sustainable Water Infrastructure for the 21st Century. 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.

  "We're from the government, and we're here to help."  In this case, it's true.  The EPA has published Asset Management: A Guide for Small Water Systems, which is really "asset management lite."  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!  If you want a nicer approach that can wow your board or city council, check here.

The Role of Asset Management in Asset Creation — Slideshow as presented at the CWEA Asset Management Seminar in Berkeley CA on September 17, 2003. A large file but a good introduction to an asset management approach that can save you a lot of money.

Kevin Young of Hunter Water offers another PowerPoint slideshow:  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.

The EPA's irrepressible Steve Allbee offers us his presentation The Gap in Water and Wastewater Infrastructure and the Changing Face of Water Utility Management. Presented in May 2003 to the Canadian Ministry of the Environment in Toronto, this slideshow is chock full of good stuff on asset management.

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.  Worth printing out and filing, at least.

Asset Management: A Life-cycle Approach — Ken Harlow's paper presented at WEFTEC 2001 (updated slightly), introducing the Australia/ New Zealand approach to infrastructure asset management.  Driver, benefits, difficulties—it's all here. 

Asset Management: An Australian Perspective — Hunter Water's Kevin Young offers some very good information on AM as practiced at his own Hunter Water.  Well worth reviewing!  Large file (1+ MB).

Australian Water Industry: Infrastructure, A Reform Agenda — EPA infrastructure guru Steve Allbee offers this slideshow reprising his fact-finding trip to Australia and his investigations of asset management practices in the water industry there.  Well worth reviewing!  Big (2+MB) PowerPoint file.

USDOT Treatise on Asset Management — Pretty general but perhaps useful nonetheless.  PDF file.

Asset Management Links

Some links to other pages with asset management information.

NAMS (New Zealand) —  You can order the International Infrastructure Management Manual here.

Great site for Australian asset management: The New South Wales Government Asset Management Committee page. There are some good things here, including the Total Asset Management manual, linked separately below.

  This is the Total Asset Management manual from New South Wales in Australia. Weighing in at 392 pages, chances are that what you want to know is in there...somewhere. A bit deficient in the table of contents area, but chock full of asset management wisdom!

AMQ International, hailing from down under, where most excellent asset management things originate these days. Lots of links to discussions, tools, even our own humble asset management page. This is the place to go to check out the latest developments in infrastructure asset management. A premier site!

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) offers a whole lot of material on urban water asset management, concentrating on life-cycle costing and related matters. Check out "Research" and "Published papers."

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 sections on "Urban Infrastructure Rehabilitation" and a "National Guide to Sustainable Municipal Infrastructure.

Asset Management Series — An AM primer from the government of Victoria.

New Zealand Local Government Online, Asset Management Index Page

Parliament of Australia, Asset Management by Commonwealth Agencies

Rebuild America Coalition — Lobbyists for infrastructure renewal (and federal funds to support it).

California Rebuild America Coalition — CalRAC, the state chapter.

I will add more links as time allows.   If you have good links, please e-mail them to me!