Drinking Water

ASSET MANAGEMENT for DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS

New England’s public drinking water system infrastructure is aging, providing unique challenges for public water systems.  Inconsistent and missing historical records and decentralized reporting can lead to missed opportunities to reduce maintenance costs while extending the life of the system’s infrastructure and providing more reliable public service. CEI’s asset management for public drinking water systems solves these problems by providing a centralized and easy to use repository of system information and work planning/tracking.

Key Benefits

• Risk Reduction

Emergencies are expensive to remedy but are preventable. Use asset management to create work order lists of preventative maintenance to reduce the risk of disruptive emergency repairs. Document and resolve potential issues affecting your ability to provide uninterrupted water service before they adversely impact employees or your customers. Ensure regulatory requirements are achieved and readily documented for routine inspections.

• Cost Savings

Asset management is an ideal capital project planning tool, providing insights and evidence for future infrastructure capital expenditure. Reduce the cost of operations and capital expenditure using information about your water system assets age, service history, and performance. Reduce the number of high-cost emergency repairs. Plan and set rates based on evidence. Seek and obtain funding with a solid, fact-based presentation of the project.

• Knowledge in the Field

It’s common among public utilities for decades of institutional knowledge to be undocumented and to reside in staff member’s memory. This can lead to operational blind spots, employee burnout, and difficulty with employee transitions. Easy and ongoing documentation of water system assets documents and identifies areas of risk, regardless of employee tenure. It also identifies critical activities for focused maintenance. By democratizing asset maintenance information and providing key information to staff members in the field, they are empowered to be more effective in their role, which is a significant benefit given the current and projected skilled labor shortages.

Solutions

• Centralize water system asset records. Easily capture data from historical records, employee experience, and ongoing activities.
• Track water system infrastructure status over time, based on newly acquired information from system flushing and other field activities.
• Generate work orders based on an asset’s maintenance history and service interval.
• Identify and defend capital planning needs for water system infrastructure improvements.
• Accessible anywhere with a web browser. No dedicated software.
• Improve success at grant applications with better supporting documentation
• Easily interpreted visualization options:
  • Pipe Size and/or Material
  • Level of Service at Hydrants for Available Fire Flow
  • Asset Age and/or Remaining Useful Life
  • Maintenance Status (recently maintained, maintenance needed, etc.)