Asset Management for water infrastructure

Coordinated project to improve water and road infrastructure on Grand River in Detroit.

Asset management has become a buzz word over the last few years. Has it been on Jeopardy yet? The term is broad and used across various industries (Are we talking investments? Software?), but today I’m going to dive into SEMCOG’s Infrastructure Asset Management Program, which focuses on water infrastructure. Not water fountains or garden hoses, but the actual infrastructure below the streets where most of us never see it or think much about it. When you turn on your tap or take a shower, do you really know where your water comes from or goes?

What are the assets, and how are they doing, really?

A community needs to understand the assets it owns – in the case of water, this would mean pipes and things like hydrants, valves, manholes, and catch basins. Many of the systems in our region were installed in the 1950s or earlier. Although the life expectancy of a water main is long, many are reaching the end of their useful life.

A community with a thorough asset management program takes steps to prevent catastrophe and plan for improving the system before it fails. What does this really entail though? Let’s think of a drinking water system in the fictional town of MyFavoriteCity, Michigan. In MFC, the public works department has undergone the effort of locating and mapping all of their drinking water pipes and associated structures. This cost a bit up front, but the team knew it was worth it. The MFC team knows the diameter, age, and material of every pipe that they own. They keep excellent records of maintenance, like when a new development comes to town and they add new piping to serve the residents or when a water main breaks and they repair it.

What difference does it make?

The benefit of this informed approach is that MFC can budget for these improvements, inform their residents, coordinate with other utility providers and the MFC roads team to plan improvement projects for the year 2025. Money is saved and improvements can be completed efficiently.

Now let’s imagine a drinking water system in MyFavoriteCity’s neighboring community PoorPlanningTown, Michigan. In PPT, there is an understaffed public works department, and a lot of the pipes in PPT are really old. The previous public works director retired, moved to Jamaica, and is not returning calls from anyone asking questions about the old system. The new public works director doesn’t have any institutional knowledge of the system, and the department is busy tackling emergency issues, so they haven’t had time to inventory their system.

In PPT, much of the planned budget for improvements is spent on repairing water main breaks. The historic records of pipe locations have been lost, and because there is not a proper inventory of the system, it’s hard to decide which improvements to make when the money becomes available. It is also more expensive to replace assets after they fail, so the money cannot go as far.

Is it too late to improve AM practices?

Let’s take a second to think how PoorPlanningTown could get themselves back on track with a strategic asset management system. It could spend money and effort to inventory their system to find out where the pipes are, what size they are, and how old they are. It could start to track water main repairs and identify one neighborhood has a lot of breaks.

With this documentation and further study, PPT could determine that this high-frequency main-break neighborhood has particularly corrosive soils. It could then prioritize replacement in this neighborhood in its long-term improvement plan and use pipe material that is more resistant to corrosion. An informed asset management approach will also help them coordinate with entities outside of their own.

This approach can be costly up front, but SEMCOG is here to help kick things off.

How does SEMCOG’s program work?

We have a new Southeast Michigan Infrastructure Asset Management Program, and we’re asking communities to submit water infrastructure data to help us develop a clearinghouse of this information. When we understand the assets we have in our region and what kind of condition they’re in, we’ll be able use this information to develop a needs study for Drinking Water, Sanitary Sewer, and Storm Sewer systems in the region. We’ll also use this to help coordinate with other entities and work toward the culture shift that will accept strategic asset management. The main goals of this program are:

• Understanding the overall condition of infrastructure assets
• Strengthening coordination on infrastructure projects to improve cost efficiencies and reduce inconvenience to the public
• Sharing best practices for asset management programs
• Developing a clearinghouse to summarize regional infrastructure needs
• Communicating region-wide priorities at the state level

We know that communities want to operate in the most efficient way, but that it’s not always possible with a limited budget, emergencies, and day-to-day operations. We’re hoping that this program, which has made funding available to applicants, can start the conversation and efforts in making asset management a normal part of every system’s operations. Learn more on our website.

Yes, it’s very similar to the issues with our roads

For more context, let’s look at a graph of infrastructure spending for road repairs. Asset management requires a holistic approach, it only hurts each individual system – and, ultimately, the residents, when entities work in silos. Roads are an easier example because we can see their condition, and much effort has been made to understand their funding strategies and life expectancies. In the graph below, which I pulled from the 21^st Century Infrastructure Commission report, we can see that spending money sooner on preservation saves a lot of money on rehab or reconstruction. Though this graph is about roads, the message applies to water infrastructure as well.