Size Doesn’t Matter – Approaches to Asset Management Regardless of Agency Size

Presentation Description: Asset Management is not a new discipline - people and organizations have been doing it in some form for a long time. While California’s larger utilities have tended to embrace AM to maximize the value of their physical assets, while balancing cost, levels of service and risk, smaller utilities have been slower to adopt. The reason for this may be that the common perception is that an agency must have a hefty budget and dedicated resources to establish an AM Program, seemingly a daunting task.

Pragmatic approaches are needed to launch and sustain AM. This presentation will discuss various approaches that agencies of any size can use to successfully implement a value-added AM program that can be reliably maintained by internal staff. We will describe the process that the City of Auburn, CA and Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD) used to develop their programs. We will discuss:
 The importance of a working group to charter the program,
 Approaches for vertical assets vs. horizontal assets (GIS),
 Condition Assessment approaches for vertical assets vs horizontal assets and ways to automate data collection.
 How asset criticality and risk are defined.
 Examples of service levels and key performance indicators.
 Mobile solutions to ensure work orders, inspections, condition assessments are easy to complete and consistent.

In the case of Auburn (services population of approx. 13,000), the City collaborated with a consultant to collect asset data, develop asset criticality and risk definitions, and establish key performance indicators per asset class. For MNWD (services population of approx. 170,000), the District established an internal committee to focus on a phased implementation with collaboration between engineering and operations staff to generate asset hierarchies, establish agency-specific useful lives and probability of failure, and rank infrastructure criticality.

The result for both agencies has been more streamlined maintenance programs based on asset criticality and data driven decision making for capital improvements. This presentation will share the approaches each agency took, success stories in implementing asset management, and lessons learned. Asset management is important whether you have 13,000 or 170,000 customers.