Implementing Advanced Technologies and Asset Management to Help Prioritize and Rehabilitate Critical Pressurized Pipeline Infrastructure

Pressurized pipeline infrastructure (both water and wastewater) throughout the US is reaching a critical stage of critical condition. The outlook of this infrastructure as recently described in ASCE's 2017 Report Card (and statewide individual report cards in each successive years) shows that the trend line of system deterioration is getting worse for both water and sewer conveyance systems. This trend will not change direction in a positive manner, unless a number of critical steps are undertaken. The report insists that the only feasible way to address this rapidly increasing rate of pressurize pipelines for both water wand sewer infrastructure deterioration is through asset management. Specifically, it states that 'Asset management provides utility managers and decision-makers with critical information on capital infrastructure assets and timing of investments. Some key steps for asset management include making an inventory of critical assets; evaluating their condition and performance; developing plans to maintain, repair, and replace assets; and funding these activities'. The ones that are hardest are also the ones that are, for the most part, pressurized 24/7/365. To turn this corner and establish better and more reliable information on the actual condition of these buried and essential pressurized assets, several recent (and very cool) advances in performing both external and internal inspection and assessment of water mains, force mains, valves, hydrants and other ancillary facilities has moved the level of understating condition and remaining useful life (RUL) to new levels. With these technologies and established protocols for determining their associated risks, cities and utilities are starting to bring this all together under effective asset management (AM) planning so that the three pillars of AM can be managed: sustainability, reliability, and efficiency. This presentation will highlight and describe both established and new technologies in the industry's large and ever-expanding toolbox to cost-effectively move through even the largest system representing several hundred miles of pressurized pipeline in a tiered or stepwise strategy to identify those assets that are considered highest in priority and in eminent state of operational failure. This process is illustrated in the following Exhibit A.We will discuss those technologies that fit under the four stages of assessment including those that are particularly effective using science-based systems such as acoustics, correlators, HDCCTV, sonde, GPR, ultrasonic tomography, electromagnetics, and transient wave propagation. These technologies represent a wide spectrum of manufacturers and providers. The presentation will then show how date from these sources can be used, alongside of updated and newly developed NASSCPO PACP codes to compile information from each level of assessment, transform this information into meaningful and representative condition grades and scores and then create prioritized reports for capital improvement and planning projects. The work flow process that will be discussed is shown in Exhibit B. Time permitting, we will show one additional step in the process of moving everything toward an asset management program which will enhance capital improvement, create prioritized planning (again based on risk-managed approach using a traditional risk matrix), and develop preventative maintenance activities and their relative work order frequencies. By using advanced field-based inspection technologies and incorporate them in a sequenced manner, the resultant engineered data will provide water and wastewater utilities with much better information to do PMP for the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly planning and scheduling. Figure C shows how specific assets identified in the highest risk cells of a risk matrix are polled and integrated into CMMS for work orders and inventory management. In its essence we will show how utilities can logically and sequentially budget and fix buried pressurized before they fail using RISK and high-end technology for field, data assessment and prioritization. Two project examples will be presented to attendees.