Houston Developed an Innovative Risk-based Strategic Asset Management Platform for its 39 WWTP and 382 Lift Station Facilities for O&M and CIP Planning

The City of Houston is the fourth largest city in the nation. Houston Water (HW) within the Houston Public Works (HPW) department operates and maintains a large water and wastewater system. Its wastewater system includes approx. 39 treatment plants (WWTP) with a combined permitted capacity of 564 MGD, 5900 miles of sewer pipes, 127,000 manholes, and 383 lift stations spread out over 650 square miles to serve about 2.3 million customers. Its water system includes approx. 7200 miles of waterlines, 3 surface water plants with a combined production capacity of 630 MGD and 56 groundwater plants with a combined production capacity of 270 MGD to serve about 4.5 million customers in the Houston region. The operations of these huge infrastructure facilities are monitored continuously, and data are used for operational decisions, regulatory reporting, as well as long-term planning. Houston Water Planning (HWP) team within Houston Water is responsible for long-range strategic planning, 1-10 year CIP planning and operational planning. HWP uses data including asset inventory, asset conditions, day-to-day O&M information, utility infrastructure improvements and regional planning data for different ranges of planning for both water and wastewater infrastructure. Houston Water has a long history of using state-of-the-art technologies for planning and management of its water and wastewater infrastructure. Since the mid-eighties, it has used flow-monitoring and hydraulic modeling for infrastructure capacity evaluation and planning of additional capacity needs. Since the mid-nineties, it has used enterprise GIS to document all infrastructure assets which provides the backbone for linear assets computerized work order management system. Since the mid-2000s, it has used Infor Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) to document facilities asset inventory and day-to-day work order management. For the last few years, HWP team has been supporting wastewater operations in developing and implementing Strategic Asset Management Plan. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey brought in massive amount of rainfall up to approximately 50 inches in some area of Houston, which flooded many wastewater facilities including treatment plants and lift stations. Houston conducted the preliminary damage assessment just after the Hurricane. However, the damage to the system was extensive and Houston decided to do a detail condition assessment of the facilities to document the pre and post flooding condition. Houston Water Planning step in the process to help wastewater operations and create the foundation of the condition assessment and make it efficient and effective such that the massive data collected could also be seamlessly used for the City's goal of Strategic Asset Management. Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework of the wastewater facilities condition assessment which is a subset of the overall Strategic Asset Management Framework. Entire condition assessment project implementation for facilities involved 26 consulting teams. To manage the massive activities for this project and to ensure uniformity of the process followed by each of the 26 consultants, who will be utilizing various existing asset databases including InforEAM, the Houston Water Planning developed a unique and innovative approach. Utilizing the systemwide facilities asset condition data, HWP team recently completed a risk-based strategic need assessment for O&M and CIP Planning Platform. The Platform provides list of asset needs interactively based on the user-defined criteria set by the group of O&M and Planning staff. Houston's experience of developing such an innovative risk-based strategic asset management platform from inception to implementation to will be shared with the water utilities communities.