Aging Water Infrastructure Drives Greater Use of Asset Management

A condensed version of the report that McGraw-Hill and CH2M-Hill will publish in its entirety in March, Water Infrastructure Asset Management: Adopting Best Practices to Enable Better Investment, focused on the increased use of asset management to confront the challenges of aging infrastructure. Of the three options presented, (1) aging infrastructure, (2) need to increase system reliability, and (3) need to understand better the risk and consequence of asset failure, 75% of the utilities surveyed cited aging infrastructure as their primary concern. Five industry organizations participated in the survey, American Public Works Association, American Water Works Association, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, National Association of Water Companies, and Water Environment Federation, with 451 respondents from the US and Canada. These utilities served populations ranging from 3,300 to over 500,000.

Of the three categories of best practices, Technology and Data Practices to Support the Program, Strategy and Performance Measurement Practices, and Processes and Methods for Sound Investment Decisions, the Technology group received 70% or more agreement from respondents. Specifically, the participants concurred with the statements "asset-condition assessment for renewal/replacement planning . . . asset register to facilitate analysis and planning . . . computerized maintenance management system". Within the Strategy and Performance Measurement Practices category, strategic asset management plans and development of an asset management policy received over 70% agreement.

The respondents offered some insight into the utilities apt to adopt an aggressive asset management strategy: those with populations of over 50,000 and those that "trend toward higher levels of planned rate increases by 2017 than firms at the low end" (p.2). The authors surmised that "this is likely due to the fact that organizations using most of the asset management practices can better predict the needs they face and set realistic rate increases" (p.2).

The report gauged from respondents the benefits of "taking an asset management approach" (p.2) . This reason dominated: Improved ability to explain and defend Budgets/Investments to Governing bodies" (p.2). Another reason, a better focus on priorities, participants mentioned as an advantage of an asset management program.

Of the respondents actively engaged in asset management, they identified two lessons learned from its implementation--a culture change within an organization and the need to benchmark results.

This blog will review the complete findings of the report in March.
Water Infrastructure Asset Management SmartMarket Report, http://www.construction.com/market_research