Improving Utility O&M and Capital Decisions by Incorporating the Concepts of Asset Condition, Criticality and Risk

Toho Water Authority (TWA) provides water, wastewater and reclaimed water service to
approximately 85,000 customers in Kissimmee Florida. For the past three years the Utility has
been implementing an asset management program for their over $700 million dollars worth of
water, wastewater, and reclaimed water assets. During this program TWA has made significant
investments in asset management information systems including INFOR EAM Computer
Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and an ESRI Geographic Information System (GIS)
database. These two systems now contain the comprehensive asset inventory for the utility. A
built-in interface between the programs allows the CMMS and GIS to integrate and share
information.
Once the software implementation and inventory was complete, TWA wanted to obtain
additional physical, financial, and asset management attributes for their assets to support the
overall asset management program, which includes evaluating asset risk, measuring utility
performance and effectively planning for future renewal and replacement needs. The CMMS
software was configured to store the attribute data in January of 2008 after conducting interactive
workshops with staff to define the attributes. In August of 2008 a pilot project was implemented
to define the process to consistently collect and calculate the asset data including condition,
consequence of failure, risk, and replacement cost for all vertical assets in the utility. The pilot
area contained one water plant, one wastewater plant and 47 lift stations that fed the wastewater
plant. This paper will describe the methodology that was established to obtain and calculate the
data, the results of the data analysis, and uses for the data to further their asset management
program and overall decision making.