Aligning Service Levels and KPI's as part of Creating an Effective Asset Management Plan for Your Sewer Mains

Performance Management is a key component of any successful Asset Management Program and includes the establishment of Levels of Service to meet stakeholder needs both internally and externally. Levels of Service can be measured and communicated internally and externally through leading and lagging key performance indicators (KPI's). External communications typically focus on outcomes you will provide for key stakeholders and internal communications typically focus on measuring the achievement of necessary activities that need to be performed to meet the agreed upon outcomes. This sounds fairly simple but becomes more complicated to communicate and measure throughout an entire Utility organization. Ideally there should be connectivity from the top Utility Strategic Plan for the organization down through the daily work activities that are needed to achieve the asset management goals to gain staff buy in and understanding of their role towards asset management. An example of how top-down connectivity should take place through the various asset management components is shown in Figure 1. At Toho Water Authority, Arcadis evaluated the existing performance measures and created a more structured and top-down performance management framework for the sewer mains as part of developing a formalized Strategic Asset Management Plan and tactical Sewer Main Asset Management Plan. In considering the stakeholder outcomes, the newly proposed sewer system management requirements for operations and maintenance of the sewer mains in FDEP 62-600 were also incorporated to set them up for future success. Toho Water Authority serves 105,000 wastewater customers in Kissimmee, Poinciana, and unincorporated areas of Osceola County. The wastewater pipelines, exclusive of service connections, are valued at approximately $2.25 billion replacement cost in 2021 dollars. The Asset Management Plan that was developed addresses proactive planning for operations, maintenance, and capital investment decisions regarding Toho's wastewater pipeline infrastructure, including 948 miles of gravity sewer mains and 332 miles of force mains. To align the Sewer Main Asset Management Plan performance measures framework, the goals, and objectives from the Asset Management Policy, that were derived from the Utility Strategic Plan Goals for Infrastructure, were applied, and included three level of service areas: 1. Risk-Based Decisions: Apply risk-based decision making to identify capital and operations and maintenance priorities. 2. Least Lifecycle Cost: Make investment decisions that provide the targeted level of service to customers at the least lifecycle cost. 3. Regulatory Compliance: Ensure that all decisions and activities comply with applicable laws and rules, including Toho policies. Leading and Lagging measures were developed for each of these Level of Service Categories that would be measured at different levels within the organization. An example is shown for Least Life Cycle Cost in the table below. Strategic measures are reviewed and communicated externally by Toho Leadership and tactical measures will be reviewed and communicated internally by Operations and Maintenance Managers and Supervisors. Most of the tactical measures are leading indicators that impact the ability to meet the strategic measures. If these metrics fail to meet targets, then the strategic measures will also eventually be below desired targets. An example of these measures is included in Table 1 for the level of service Least Life Cycle Cost. A phased plan for implementation was also developed to start with existing and easy to implement measures and phase in more complex ones. The implementation plan also considered the availability and quality of the data needed for reporting which is very dependent on the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) field collected data. As part of the Asset Management Plan development, Operations and Maintenance improved process workflows were developed for inspection and assessment programs that will schedule all proactive work in the CMMS, mark its completion, the cost to complete the work, and store any required attributes within GIS. An ongoing initiative is also in progress to simplify and streamline the problem, cause, and remedy CMMS work order code tables to accurately capture and report on asset failures. The connection between good data stored within the CMMS and the ability to successfully report performance measures repeatably and accurately is extremely important to understand. This paper will provide a full case study on how the performance management framework was developed to link together the higher-level asset management strategy to the day-to-day activities for sewer mains and successfully achieve level of service commitments. Any utility that is working on an asset management program and is considering writing Asset Management Plans for their individual asset classes will benefit from this presentation by learning how performance measures can successfully be developed to support both strategic and tactical level reporting and help achieve comprehensive asset management goals throughout the organization.