10-years of Planning and Progress toward Newport's (RI) Mission to Implement Proactive Asset Management Practices

The City of Newport Department of Utilities owns and operates the City's wastewater, stormwater and drinking water systems. The City's wastewater system dates back to the 1870s and was originally designed to convey both wastewater and storm drainage. It currently includes one wastewater treatment plant, 97 miles of gravity and force mains, 15 pump stations and 2 CSO treatment facilities. The City's storm drainage system includes 50 miles of storm drains, thousands of manholes and catch basins, tide gates and 161 outfalls. Large portions this system were installed in the 1970s to support the City's separation program. The City's drinking water system dates back to the 1870s and currently includes 9 surface water surface reservoirs, two treatment plants, 170 miles of water mains, 3,300 valves, 1,000 hydrants and 14,500 services. Field services are an important component of the effective operation of all three systems. This presentation provides an overview of the City's journey from development of the asset inventory, its initial condition assessments, and the benefits the City has realized as it migrated from reactive to proactive asset management. In 2010, the City of Newport implemented a platform of asset management processes and tools to optimize the management of its linear assets. This included a cloud-based system of GIS maps, document libraries and maintenance management applications. The initial efforts were designed to support its CSO and CMOM programs. Mobile devices and the City's GIS were used to establish an accurate inventory for its wastewater and storm drainage assets, and to perform baseline condition assessments. Sustainable workflows were established to implement improvements to the inventory by filling gaps and addressing system repairs and replacements. The GIS and condition assessment databases provided a solid foundation for planning work specific to the CSO program and system operations and reporting activities related to its CMOM program. In 2018, the City resumed responsibilities for operation of its wastewater collection system. To support this change, the City established standardized forms for inspections of assets in both the wastewater and storm drain system. This included manholes, tide gates, and outfalls. The City also established workflows for planning/scheduling maintenance and repairs using Azteca's Cityworks cloud-based applications. Since the transition, the City's Field Services staff have performed thousands of inspections. Data from these inspections has supported the City's Field Services Program in shifting from baseline field inspections and reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance management. In addition to tracking the frequency and location of maintenance activities, the City now tracks costs associated with labor and materials. The City also tracks response to service requests by constituents, assigns work orders for preplanned activities, tracks materials, and a host of other asset management capabilities all linked directly to the assets in the GIS. Overall progress toward maintaining these systems is tracked in a series of dashboards which are reviewed by office and field staff to refine priorities and schedules. Since implementing these tools and work practices for its wastewater and storm drainage systems the City is seeing improvements to key performance indicators including reductions in the frequency of both CSOs and SSOs. In 2022 the City's drinking water assets were incorporated into the asset management system. This included the cloud-based GIS and maintenance management platforms. The transition to implementing modern asset management practices for the drinking water assets was supported by the inventory, condition assessment and work planning functions that had been in-place for its other assets. The water crews now track the frequency and location of maintenance activities and the costs associated with the related labor and materials. Overall progress toward maintaining the drinking water assets is tracked in system-specific dashboards. The City's asset management tools have also been instrumental toward the implementation of their lead service removal program. The water system's GIS served as the foundation for its lead service line materials inventory. Information from the City's records are being used to fill gaps in age and materials data related to both the public and private sides of the services. The GIS and maintenance management applications are also serving as a foundation for other program requirements related to self-reporting, sampling and monitoring, and public education. The City has been implementing improvements incrementally over the last 10-years and is continuing to do so. Enhancements in-progress at this time include an asset management capabilities and maturity assessment, improvements to its document management systems and development of digital asset management plans.