Great Lakes Water Authority’s Unique Approach to Asset Management Governance

On June 12, 2015, the City of Detroit (City) and GLWA executed a regional water system lease, a regional sewage disposal system lease and a water and sewer services agreement giving GLWA management and control over all regional water and wastewater wholesale services, while the City and the suburban customer communities retained control of local/retail water and sewer services within their respective borders. The agreements became effective on January 1, 2016, at which time GLWA assumed regional operations of one of the largest water systems in the United States, in terms of water produced, wastewater treated and population served. As an asset-centric organization, with a wide array of assets sprawled across multiple geographic locations, the water system currently serves an area of 981 square miles and an estimated population of nearly 4 million or nearly 40 percent of Michigan’s population.After its formation, GLWA quickly realized that the previous asset management structure was fragmented, with programs initiated at various levels of detail and scope across the organization. Asset management was primarily left to the individual service areas (e.g. Water, Wastewater, Field Services, Fleet & Facilities, etc.) and involvement was typically driven by regulatory compliance or corrective maintenance. With no single path to follow and lack of a strategic enterprise-wide Asset Management Plan, GLWA was being pulled in many different directions. In response, the Authority developed an innovative asset management governance structure that has shown improvement in inter-departmental collaboration and widened the scope of a focused and cohesive asset management plan at GLWA.In December 2016, GLWA developed a unique and innovative “Teams of Teams” organizational structure designed to overcome these obstacles and unite a fragmented asset management culture into one “Asset Management Strategic Organization (AMSO)”, mandated to provide a systematic approach, guidance and leadership to asset management. This governance structure is a hybrid between a centralized and decentralized asset management model, where subject matter experts from each service area participate in AMSO teams with a centralized focus to prioritize, coordinate, manage and implement projects, initiatives and asset management strategies. This unique approach to asset management governance has been successful in reducing “silos” of knowledge and data across the large GLWA organization and has helped provide an inclusive framework and governance structure for long-term sustainable asset management strategy and processes.The primary focus of this paper is to provide an insight into how GLWA, a large water and wastewater utility with a vast array of assets, spread across various service areas and locations, with a legacy fragmented asset management culture, was able to create a single focused asset management structure providing each service area support and direction to optimize asset operations, maintenance, life cycles and associated costs.This paper describes the following:What is AMSO?What AMSO representsHow AMSO is structuredWhy is AMSO uniqueHow is AMSO valuableWhat is being done to continuously improve AMSO.