Asset Management for Water

Worldwide, governments, municipalities, as well as owners, managers and operators of water and wastewater systems are increasingly faced with the challenges of doing more with less financial resource—expanding and sustaining safe and reliable services with aging water and wastewater assets and decreased or limited funding. With this also comes the difficulty in discerning where to invest next to optimise the use of existing assets, or even where the greatest likelihood of asset failure and risk will occur along with its accompanying consequences. Added to these complexities are external forces acting upon the industry as a whole require more effective responses: increasing pressure from the public demanding improved service levels and lower costs, regulatory compliance, population growth, increasing gaps between projected water supplies and water demands, business transparency, as well as mega trends such as environmental sustainability, climate change, and infrastructure resiliency. 

Whether water and wastewater systems are publicly or privately owned, are aged or under-funded, clearly the management of assets can no longer be purely reactive. A proactive approach that efficiently and effectively manages water and wastewater systems is essential to ensure long-term sustainability, resilience and security. This is where WSP’s asset management capabilities come in. 

WSP’s goal is to help our clients respond to asset management drivers and customer needs in a cost-effective way by helping them to understand what their long-term goals are, to identify their high priority gaps and opportunities, and to manage their greatest risks. Our goal is also to challenge preconceived notions and assumptions in order to provide prudent and efficient capital works programs based on our clients accepted risk profile and budget, as well as to help design sustainable tariff structures that can adequately support water and wastewater services. This approach delivers key benefits:

• Better understanding of existing system performance and condition, as well as level of service through the development and use of robust planning tools

• Capital works cost saving and/or deferral potential through existing asset optimization and utilisation

• Reduced risks in design and construction stages through development of constructible solutions which consider safety, operational flexibility and future operational needs

• Improved value for money by identifying solutions that satisfy technical, regulatory, environmental, economy, social and sustainability requirements

• Pricing structures that meet the cost of sustainability requirements for water, wastewater and storm water systems

Drawing on decades of experience, some of the core elements of our approach in implementing successful asset management plans and programs has included helping clients to build strategic foundations, establish service levels and performance baselines, and to develop realistic and integrated capital and financial plans. Our experts include authors of and key contributors to international guidelines and best practice development, including International Standard for Asset Management Systems and ISO 55001: 2014. Through a slew of services within our asset management program, WSP can address specific pain points being felt in water, wastewater and storm water system management. We can help clients capture and analyse data about the assets themselves, the condition, location and real value of their assets, make smarter and cost-effective decisions, to better understand their largest risks and avoid critical failures within their water infrastructure. Our services include:

• Business transformation, Organisational design, Culture assessment

• ISO 55001: 2014 assessment

• Asset Management Capability Assessment Modelling

• Capability assessment and Improvement programs

• Strategic and business planning 

• Financial analysis and Economic modelling 

• Regulatory support 

• Tariff structure design 

• Performance metrics and Level of Service (LoS) indicators

• Risk and vulnerability assessment and management

• Asset inventory, Condition assessment and Predictive modeling 

• Failure analysis 

• Capital planning and Portfolio optimization

• Alternative delivery feasibility and Transaction support

• Life cycle cost and timing optimisation

• Operations and maintenance budgeting 

• Technology planning, Architecture, Strategy, and Integration

• Data analytics and visualisation

• Training program development, training support and delivery

WSP’s comprehensive know-how within the water, wastewater and storm water sectors gives us unrivalled forecasting abilities that help optimise investment, bring cost and service level benefits and maximise asset longevity and value. We have led implementations around the world, and have developed roadmaps on how to improve the asset management of water and wastewater systems through changing processes, developing staff and investing in technology.

For Northern Ireland Water (NI Water), a state-owned provider of water and sewerage services in North Ireland, we developed a robust risk and consequence model to target, prioritise and increase the timing and efficiency of capital maintenance interventions in the trunk main network. We assessed financial, hydraulic, water quality, environmental and social criteria to develop statistical frequency-of-failure models and derived an overall consequence score. Intervention works were subsequently prioritised and justified for the 3,000 km trunk and strategic water main network based on likelihood and severity of failure. The model gives NI Water unprecedented visibility of the mains most in need of intervention/mitigation and improves the risk management and resilience of the system.

In another instance, WSP assisted VA SYD, an umbrella organisation formed by four municipalities in southern Sweden serving 400,000 inhabitants. Swedish municipalities are responsible for supplying populations with water and wastewater services. Sweden’s water tariff structure focuses on central tenets such as fairness and prime cost principle, where benefactors of water and wastewater services should pay no more than what is fair and equitable, and the gross revenue derived from tariffs should not exceed the utility’s total expenditure. As member municipalities differ greatly in population, rate of urbanisation, density and water situation, as well as in tariff structures and water rates, WSP acted as a process leader, helping VA SYD unify its structures to best meet the overarching goal of fairness and equitability while still following the prime cost principle in each municipality.

In Australia, WSP was commissioned by Sydney Water Corporation (SWC) as one of three suppliers to assess the condition of its critical water main and sewer rising main assets. The total program of works was initially planned to be delivered by June 2016, with around 350 km of pipeline inspections. The program was extended to June 2017 and included more pipelines for inspection. The Pipeline Condition Assessment Program will provide SWC with information that will allow them to better manage their infrastructure in the future.