Developing a Dynamic Interactive Strategic Asset Management Plan for Wastewater Facilities using Rapidly Emerging Business Analytics Tools and Techniques – A Case Study at City of Houston

The City of Houston is the fourth largest City in the United States. Houston Water owns and operates thirty-nine (39) Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) with total permitted wastewater treatment capacity of 564 MGD. It also owns and operates 384 collection system lift stations spatially distributed across the City.The City’s wastewater infrastructure includes hundreds of vertical and linear assets. Since the mid-2000s, the City has used Infor Enterprise Asset Management (InforEAM) to document inventory and day-to-day work order management for the vertical assets/ facilities and CityWorks for the linear assets. Recently, the City has undertaken an initiative to update its asset inventory through field data collection at all wastewater facilities. This initiative also includes assessing the conditions of the assets. Using the updated asset inventory along with its condition, the City has developed a methodology for updating its Strategic Asset Management (SAM) Plan. As part of SAM, the Houston Water Planning team developed a dynamic and interactive decision-making tool for asset life-cycle based analysis and planning utilizing field verified asset information including the condition.The following details the City’s wastewater facilities Strategic Asset Management methodology and associated tool.