Asset Management Planning and Reporting Options for Water Utilities

Managers of drinking water utilities face the difficult task of identifying appropriate levels of renewal and replacement spending, and achieving buy-in for the required funding levels from boards and councils. This project was commissioned to provide the framework to identify and test several levels of asset management planning, using samples of assets from a dozen participating utilities. As water utilities strive to implement appropriate strategies for managing their considerable treatment plant and distribution assets, they are faced with challenges that include (1) fully valuing water in a marketplace whose customers and policymakers have become accustomed to below market rates for service, and (2) developing more strategic asset management programs in the face of increased funding competition. Most articles, papers, and publications on asset management are based on theoretical examples or single- case studies. This project was designed by AwwaRF as a management study to help address the lack of comparative case studies. The study provides the first casebook that utility managers, finance directors, engineering managers, and interested persons can use to see the kind of information that they would get from varying levels of asset management. The study also identified a number of priority actions for future industry research to further advance the state of knowledge and practice, based on limitations encountered in efficiently populating data sets for this study.