Managing Priorities: CRW's Program for Owning Linear Assets

Capital Regional Water (CRW) has embarked on numerous multi-faceted initiatives, including an Asset Management program, GIS development of all utilities, and management programs for wet weather flow within sewer and combined storm sewers and water systems.GHD was commissioned to assist CRW with an Asset Management program to assess the risks of sinkholes and develop a systematic asset management framework for all utilities. The initial framework developed a systematic asset registry, assessed conditions of failure, determined utility residual life, and business risk (criticality).125 sinkholes and 138 water pipe breaks were used in the initial analysis of sinkhole risk. The addition of United States Geological Survey (USGS) geology within the service area enabled the development of priority service areas that contained assets that should be addressed due to their high likelihood and consequence of experiencing a failure event. A decision graph was developed with the resultant element values to identify areas of high priority.The recommendation that CRW followed was to identify the locations and sections of assets within the high area of priority due to their high likelihood and consequence of experiencing a failure event. The analysis indicated a total of 45.1 km (28 miles) of pipe in water, sewer, and stormwater systems are under the highest criticality area.To complement the AM program, CRW is using the CityWorks work management tool to enable a GIS-based information in concert with the AM program to be utilized to determine work orders and tasks to be tracked through the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS).