Asset Management in the Other Kansas City

Like many communities across the nation, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas (UG) has an aging wastewater and stormwater system that requires continuous maintenance. Partially precipitated by years of inadequate asset maintenance, the UG is also under a Federal Consent Decree to renew wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, address sewer system overflows and achieve compliance with the Clean Water Act (CWA). This led the UG's Water Pollution Control (WPC) Division to initiate an asset management program to drive continuous improvement across the organization. This presentation will describe the potential breadth of an asset management program, the drivers to prioritize certain aspects of the program, early accomplishments, and short-term next steps. Although after three years the program is still considered to be in its infancy, the roadmap followed, challenges experienced, and lessons learned to date will benefit other wastewater and stormwater utilities that want to initiate their own, or expand the breadth of their existing, asset management program. In 2019, the WPC Division initiated an asset management program with the following mission: - Collaboratively develop and document plans and processes to identify, prioritize, and address short- and long-term system-wide asset needs in a consistent, timely, efficient, and cost-effective manner to continuously improve utility operations, reduce system risk, meet community level of service goals, and minimize system failures and emergencies. To date, the program has achieved numerous accomplishments as a result of considerable effort and intense collaboration. Below we have highlighted many of these accomplishments along with continued efforts that we believe have improved the operation of our utility and our ability to achieve our Public Works Mission. Early program accomplishments resulted in the development of preliminary Level of Service goals and performance metric targets along with digital dashboards to monitor achievement of the goals and targets. Also, working with maintenance staff, numerous modifications were made to Lucity templates, dashboards, and forms to improve functionality and ease-of-use. After setting preliminary program outcome goals, early efforts focused on pump station assets due to their system criticality. This early focus resulted in numerous accomplishments, including: - Input/updated several thousand pump station asset records in Lucity (including facility basis of design information, asset attributes, photographs, and manufacturer O&M manuals) - Performed critical pump station asset condition assessment - Prepared flood pump station operation and maintenance manuals - Performed annual flood pump station operation and maintenance training These efforts have significantly increased pump station preventive maintenance efforts (thereby reducing corrective maintenance needs) and reduced risk associated with very infrequent operation of the flood pump stations. Our recent efforts have focused on improving facility asset maintenance, which has included valuable boots-on-the-ground input, a significant Lucity asset records update, and more efficient maintenance processes and documentation. These efforts have resulted in: - Reduced emergency repairs resulting in reduced staff overtime - Reduced corrective maintenance needs by increasing preventive maintenance - Improved staff understanding of facility operations and asset management principles resulting in improved staff pride in their work - Developed performance metric dashboard to track progress, identify improvement opportunities, and highlight individual assets of concern - Increased maintenance supervisor and worker accountability by revising the work order creation procedure to require work orders to be assigned to individual crews Affectionately referred to as the 'Easy Button', preliminary standard decision-making processes/logic to determine next actions for pipe and manhole assets based on specific condition findings and overall risk have been developed. The results from these risk/decision models are exported to Lucity to support system renewal and risk evaluation efforts. Continued refinement and expansion of the Easy Button will improve identification of assets needing repair and improve the timeliness of repairing these assets due to improved efficiencies and documentation. Beyond continuing and improving our previous efforts, primary focus areas in 2023 will include Business Risk Exposure (BRE) development and asset onboarding. Critical to the program success, we will develop the BRE methodology that will be applied to assets. Using Likelihood and Consequence of Failure risk categories and factors along with a confidence tier approach, the BRE will drive our future asset decisions. Asset onboarding includes the process of inputting assets along with their attributes, preventive maintenance tasks, photographs, record drawings, and manufacturer O&M manuals into Lucity and programming the preventive maintenance task work orders to generate at the appropriate time and frequency. An asset onboarding standard operating procedures document is being developed. This document may be used by other divisions and departments that utilize Lucity and includes the following: - Process workflows for new/replacement facilities, rehabilitated facilities, and single replacement assets - Detailed Lucity asset record instructions - Standard consultant scope tasks detailing the design consultant's responsibilities in the onboarding process - Standard construction specifications detailing the contractor and equipment suppliers' responsibilities in the onboarding process Other key efforts that will continue to build and enhance our asset management program in 2023 include: - Development of asset condition assessment protocols and continued pump station and WWTP asset condition assessment to provide the data necessary for BRE calculation and smart investment - Development of standardized contracts for preventive maintenance tasks that are more efficiently performed by outside vendors to allow better tracking of these efforts and more consistent contract terms - Improve access to operation and maintenance data, including dashboards and SCADA-Lucity integration, to enable better informed, data-driven decision making within our division.