All We Really Needed to Know About Successfully Implementing an Asset Management System, We Learned in Kindergarten

In June of 2005, the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services Wastewater Group (WG) successfully went live with SPL Synergen Enterprise Asset and Workflow Management software. SPL Synergen is used by 145 WG staff to manage the inventory, maintenance and repair of 11,000+ assets at the city's two wastewater treatment plants and approximately 100 pumping stations. We attribute our success to paying close attention to the people side of the project in addition to the task/technology side. As we reflect back on this project, we've discovered that we can use Robert Fulghum's work, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten to help explain our success. We share our story by examining each line of his work, in original or adapted format, in context of the SPL Synergen implementation project.