Implementation

8.1 The “Just Do It” Philosophy

The best way to implement Asset Management is to “just do it.” There is no need to worry about getting it wrong. Asset Management is a way of thinking about managing assets in a more efficient and customer-centric way but it is not about the one right way to do this. There are as many acceptable approaches as there are utilities that engage in Asset Management, as long as the 5 core concepts form the basis of the program. Asset Management is also self-educating and self-correcting. You will learn how to do Asset Management better by doing Asset Management. The more you implement, the more you will learn. Also, if you’ve implemented one part of the program in a way that doesn’t meet your needs or doesn’t accomplish what you want, you can change it. It is completely expected that your program will look different in five years than it does when you begin. Asset Management is meant to be cyclical and no one expects a utility to have a “perfect” Asset Management program right away. In fact, perfection is not the goal. The goal is to manage your utility in a better way today and tomorrow than you did yesterday.

8.2 Getting Started 

Either an individual or a team of individuals at your organization will need to take the initiative to start Asset Management. The initial starting point can be educating yourself, your staff and elected officials about Asset Management. This guide and the videos are good tools to use in this process but there are other tools available that can be found in the resource section of this guide.

Having a “champion” in the organization who can explain the terminology as well as the benefits of Asset Management and who is willing to take a lead role in the development of an Asset Management program for the organization can aid implementation efforts. However, it is important that the knowledge, interest, and expertise not reside solely with the champion. As explained in Chapter 2, Section 2.3, Asset Management thinking and practice needs to imbed throughout the organization to prevent the sawtooth effect (practice increases, then the person leaves, the practice drops until it is picked up again.)

Asset Management requires a culture change – a different way of thinking about your utility and the services you provide. It involves accepting more transparency, acknowledging that the utility’s main function is customer service, and making management decisions on an individual asset basis. It is important to work with and support utility employees through this culture change.

There may be resistance initially to adopting Asset Management if employees or elected officials perceive that it is nothing more than extra work or the latest management fad. Most likely, people and financial resources are already stretched thin and people resent additional work if they don’t understand why they are being asked to do it or how it will benefit them. There should be benefits at all levels of the organization. It is also important that the employees and elected officials view Asset Management as the way business should be done and not just a passing fad. Asset Management has been in practice for almost two decades across the world and in that time, its prominence has only strengthened.

Building upon the pieces of Asset Management that are already in place can help start the implementation process. For example, you may have part of an asset inventory or some type of mapping. You may have a user rate or financial plan. Starting with what you already have will help you gain buy-in from the employees and it may also help you in achieving “quick wins.” A quick win is anything that can easily demonstrate value to employees, management, or the governing body. A quick win can be a comprehensive map of the utility where non existed previously, or a savings in capital projects from completing a validation exercise, or a customer survey that shows that customers want a different level of service than you are currently providing and the new service will be easier or cheaper. The utility should look for internal and external “wins” and look at all levels within the organization. The more people see the value in Asset Management and what it means for their job, the more they will embrace the concept. When people truly understand and embrace Asset Management, their thinking will become more creative and the utility will benefit.

It is also important to share your successes with your customers. They will be more supportive if they understand that the utility is working towards improving services and is making the best use of the money they pay in rates and fees.

8.2.1 Who to Involve 

Asset Management is not just one person’s job; it is everyone’s job from the field staff to management to the governing board. In a very small utility, the total staff may be 1 or 2 people and a governing body. In slightly larger utilities, there may be an operator, a clerk, a manager, and a governing body. As the size of a utility increases, there will be more people and there may even be separate departments for various functions. It is desirable to form an implementation team of some type. In a small utility, this team may only be two people. As the utility size grows, the team can be made up of a few individuals or many individuals. It is not important how many people are involved in the Asset Management team as long as all the functions ( such as operations, maintenance, budgeting, capital improvements, customer service, and financing) are represented, and as long as you find a way to gain buy-in from everybody. In smaller utilities, multiple functions may be the responsibility of the same person, so the team may be smaller.

The team can be called an Asset Management Steering Committee or some other name that shows the rest of the utility that the organization values this function and that there is a purpose to the team. In organizations that have both water and wastewater utilities, the team can be made up of individuals from both utilities. One of the first steps for the steering committee can be to develop a mission statement and goals for how they will implement the process and how they will share information with the rest of the organization and the governing body.

A steering committee does not need to be a major time commitment. The group can meet periodically, such as every other week or once a month, for an hour or two. The meetings can be a little longer to start the process and then shorten once the implementation is firmly established. The most important thing is to pick a day, time, and frequency that is feasible for your utility to make sure you get consistent participation. Serving on the steering committee should be considered a priority and the governing body needs to support this participation. The steering committee should become part of the on-going Asset Management program, so it should not be thought of as a temporary group. The frequency of meeting may lengthen after the initial implementation, but it will still need to meet.

In addition to current utility staff, a lot of knowledge about your utility resides in the heads of former operators, managers, board members, or clerks. If at all possible, the knowledge of these individuals should be captured in the implementation process. In very small systems, it may even be worthwhile to contact long-term customers who may have knowledge of past construction or operations practices. It is important to think creatively about who should be involved in the implementation process to ensure access to the maximum amount of historical information.

8.2.2 Consultants vs. Do it yourself

No one knows your utility better than you and no one is more familiar with your assets. It is better for your utility to have a simple Asset Management plan that you develop yourself that represents your values and priorities than a more sophisticated plan that was developed by someone else who may not share these values or may not understand your capabilities and limitations. If the plan sits on the shelf, it doesn’t matter how good it is, it is a failure. The point of an Asset Management plan is to implement it and start operating and maintaining the facility using Asset Management principles. If you don’t understand your plan because someone else wrote it without much input from you, then it is not useful and your money was not well-spent. This guide is intended to help you through the steps of Asset Management and to encourage you to do as much as possible yourself.

In some cases, a utility may desire outside assistance to get started, to help organize the effort, to provide encouragement, or to help complete a particular task. There are two types of assistance that may be possible: an assistance provider or a consultant. An assistance provider is generally free or low cost to the utility and will serve mostly in an advisory or training role for the utility. A consultant will be paid by the utility and may either be in an advisory role, or they may be asked to complete a particular task. The most important thing, in either case, is to be very clear about what you want from the outside assistance and to define the roles of your staff and the outside provider/consultant clearly. It is important to make sure that the outside assistance is done with you, not for you. No matter who does it, it is still your plan and that must be understood. If contract is made for outside assistance, it is important to make sure the Request for Proposals (RFP) clearly defines tasks and deliverables. This is especially important for smaller utilities with limited funds.

8.2.3 Resources – Tools, Time and People

There are resources available to assist you in your efforts to implement an Asset Management Plan. Specific resources related to tools, time, and people are presented below.

Tools
There are many tools that are available to assist in Asset Management. These tools can be asset inventory programs, guides such as this one, or methods of completing particular aspects of Asset Management. Many of these tools are available on the Web. Some examples are Energy Star, Portfolio Manager, or EPA’s CUPSS program. Other tools may be available from other utilities who have implemented Asset Management. Many of these utilities are willing to share what they have developed.

Find out what makes sense for your size and scale.
—Derek Sherry, Platte City, MO

Time
Asset Management is not “doing more,” it is “doing differently.” Therefore, in the long run, it should not represent an increase in workload. In the short term, there may be additional work related to gathering data for the inventory, evaluating asset risk or in conducting business case evaluations for capital projects, but in the long term, work should be more efficient as it moves towards more planned and less reactionary. Asset Management is not something you will implement overnight. It will take months or years to get the initial Asset Management plan in place. It is best to accept this reality at the very beginning and not get discouraged about how long the process takes. It is important to remember that even in the initial stages, before you’ve fully developed your Asset Management program, things are improving at the utility and your customers are benefitting from your efforts.

People
Other chapters and sections of this guide discuss the importance of your staff in the process. In this section, it is important to think of other resources that are available to you beyond your staff and governing body. Other utilities that have initiated or implemented Asset Management can be a resource. Call them, e-mail them, or meet with them to gain knowledge about what worked for them or how they overcame challenges. State agency personnel, such as the KDHE capacity development staff, can also be a resource. Attending conferences that include an Asset Management component can also expose you to people who are trainers or practitioners. You may also want to form an Asset Management Users Group to allow you to meet regularly with other utilities who are engaged, or want to engage, in Asset Management. The users group can include individuals from a variety of utility sizes and types very effectively. This type of sharing network can provide support and expose you to new tools, additional resources, or examples of how to address challenges.

There’s a lot of information around… different people you can call on….
—Larry Covington, Picacho, NM

You will achieve 80% of your gains for 20% of your effort.
—Ross Waugh, New Zealand

The Asset Management Plan should include the following, at a minimum:

• Introduction: The overall goal of the plan, how it was developed, who was involved (See Chapters 1, 2, and 8 in this guide)
• Current State of the Assets: The methodology used to gather asset data, how assets were defined, total number of assets, the type of data gathered for each asset or asset class, the type of inventory program, the type of mapping completed, and the location of the asset inventory. If there are a small number of utility assets, the listing of the asset inventory can be included in an appendix or as an attachment. If there are many assets, the actual data on the assets does not need to be included in the document, but it should be clear where this data resides (i.e., on a computer or in a notebook) and how you would get access to the data. (See Chapter 3 of this guide)
• Level of Service: The Level of Service goals, including target levels, how the goals will be measured, where the data will come from, how frequently the goals will be measured and how the results of the measurements will be communicated to the governing body and customers should be included. (See Chapter 4 of this guide)
• Criticality: The methodology used to evaluate criticality, including how probability of failure and consequence of failure were determined, should be included. If there are not many assets, a graph showing the relative risk of assets can be included in the document. If there are many assets, a listing of highly critical assets can be included, and how to locate this information can be referenced in the document. (See Chapter 5 of this guide)
• Life Cycle Costing: The approach used to determine how much operation and maintenance will be done on assets, by whom, and how frequently should be explained in this section. The actual maintenance tasks do not need to be explained, but a reference to where these tasks are explained should be included. For example, if there is a computer program that identifies who should do what and when, that program should be referenced. If there is a book that lists maintenance tasks, the book can be referenced. The process used to determine when assets will be repaired, rehabilitated or replaced should be explained along with the process used for capital validation. (See Chapter 6 of this guide)
• Financial Plan: The approach the utility will use to obtain the necessary funding now and in the future should be explained. (See Chapter 7 of this guide)
• Updating the Plan: The frequency by which the Plan will be reviewed and revised as well as who will do the revision should be included in this section. (See Section 8.4 of this guide)

The plan should specify how the utility will accomplish the various components, as discussed above, but does not need to include all the data that went into the plan (all the assets, or all the maintenance tasks). It can be as specific in these areas as the utility desires and the amount of specificity will depend on the number of assets or amount of data involved.

8.4 Asset Management Plan & Updates

The plan is meant to be a dynamic document, so having an electronic version of the document in a format that can be easily revised is a good idea. The plan should be reviewed each year and updated as necessary to address portions that did not provide the desired results or did not meet the needs of the utility. Because the plan will not contain the actual operational data, it does not need to be updated each time a work order is completed or condition is assessed. This continual updating should be occurring within the inventory or work order system used by the utility. The plan should be revised when changes such as the following occur: level of service goals are revised, a new approach to data collection is established, a new method of business case evaluations is developed or new approaches to funding are incorporated. A plan should be established for who will do the review of the Plan and make the updates. This may be accomplished by the Asset Management Steering Committee, if the utility has one, or by the individuals who are doing the implementation if there is not a committee.

Steal ruthlessly from other utilities. You really don’t need to re-invent the wheel.
—Kevin Campanella, Columbus, OH

8.5 Coordinating & Integrating Asset Management  

Asset Management can be extremely helpful for coordination of activities within departments or between different departments of a larger municipal entity. Coordination can, and should, be done with other city departments to ensure that construction and repair activities are managed efficiently. A typical example is the case of road repairs. Customers do not like to see a road that has recently been paved torn up to replace a water or sewer line. A good working relationship between the two departments can prevent this type of event. Money will be saved and both departments will benefit from the customer satisfaction that will result from better communication and coordination. To successfully use Asset Management to coordinate different activities across departments, a well-managed inventory, including a history of repairs and a work order system that can be accessed by different departments is helpful. However, expensive software is not a pre-requisite. Communication is the key to coordination and good communication is the result of shared vision and a common commitment.

Because Asset Management is a way of doing business, it should not be thought of as a separate or stand-alone activity. In addition to the integration of Asset Management with activities specifically related to your assets, like energy efficiency, Asset Management should be integrated with other planning activities that relate to the community as a whole. These community planning activities will involve the utility in some way, either peripherally or directly, and may include comprehensive planning, master planning, capital planning and sustainability planning.

Any good comprehensive plan or visioning effort should be based on the community’s goals and values and developed with the involvement of community members. It generally includes physical, social, and economic aspects of the community. If the comprehensive plan is truly developed by the community and reflects their values, it will provide general guidelines for utilities to consider for expansion and rehabilitation.

A master plan establishes specific long-range directions for the community and may include the utility. The Asset Management plan must integrate the goals articulated in the master plan to ensure that the two are compatible and reflect the same vision of the utility’s future operations, expansions, or changes. This is equally important whether the community wants to encourage growth or whether it wishes to preserve a quality of life that the citizens value.

A community capital improvement plan should identify those projects that have been identified as high priority for the utility. The capital improvement plan must be coordinated with the Asset Management plan to ensure that the community seeks appropriate funding for the projects for which a clear business case has been established.

Sustainability initiatives focus on the economic, social, and environmental well-being of a community in order to ensure its continued existence and preserve its values. It is particularly important for the Asset Management plan to reflect these values, as determined by the community. Doing so will ensure an Asset Management plan that is workable and has the support of the community.

Anybody that looks at that master plan knows I have issues with that old pipe.
—Bill Boulanger, Dover, NH