State of Asset and Maintenance Management Practices At U.S. Utilities: Results of a Comprehensive Survey of Various Public Utilities in the U.S.

Interest in the area of asset and maintenance management has been growing at an increasing rate among wastewater and water utilities over the last 2-5 years. With public utilities facing more and more financial challenges due to decreased federal funding, ageing infrastructure, increasing capital requirements, increasing regulation and pressure to maintain rates at a reasonable level, many utilities are looking for every opportunity to increase their efficiency and to maximize utilization of their existing resources to the best of their ability (and beyond).Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (“WSSC”) has been undertaking various reengineering efforts over the last 4 years. One area that came under review starting in 2004 was asset and maintenance management. To assist in that effort, a survey of other public water/wastewater utilities was conducted in order to determine and understand where other public water/wastewater utilities stood in their development of their asset and maintenance management systems, policies and procedures. It was hoped that such understanding would provide WSSC additional insight regarding their own current strengths/weaknesses and provide guidance for the next steps and focus areas for reengineering.The rest of this paper will examine in depth the study and survey process and summarize key results and findings of the project. It should be noted that due to an on-going update to the survey, the results and findings presented herein are from the original survey and study completed in late 2004. It is hoped that the original utilities surveyed will complete the update and that additional utilities will be added to the survey in time for presentation at the 2006 AWWA/WEF Joint Management Conference. The final results of this update will be provided at that time.