Asset Management for Water Utility

Asset management involves achieving the least cost and least risk of owning and operating assets over their life cycle while meeting service standards for customers. 

Consequently, utility managers need to put in place policies, plans, and strategies. There must also be development and implementation of a suite of processes that cover asset acquisition, operation, maintenance, overhaul, and disposal.

Asset management also means applying tools that help make these processes effective, such as setting service levels, computing life-cycle asset costs, maintaining an asset register, monitoring asset condition and performance, and carrying out a risk analysis of possible asset failure. 

Asset management for water utilities is more complex than for most other sectors because of the number, variety, age, condition, and location of assets; the magnitude of asset investment; and the difficulty of inspecting and maintaining buried assets. 

This complexity is often compounded by a lack of finance, information, and skills that can impede acquiring, commissioning, maintaining, overhauling, and replacing assets at the optimum time.

Asset management is impossible without the support of good asset records (usually known as an asset register or asset database). This requires investing in robust processes for consistently collating and recording information; gathering past data; establishing an asset classification method; and investing in a computer system that contains several key modules to allow, for example, planning and acquisition of assets, maintenance of records, and scheduling of asset replacement.

Asset record systems include card indexes, spreadsheets, customized software from major vendors, or computer applications developed in-house. Customized vendor systems may be the most cost and time-efficient option. Vendors have invested considerable funds to develop their asset systems, which are integrated with other systems such as financial, customer services, maintenance, and GIS. 

View dashboard here:  https://arcg.is/1SX0Hv

Software Used: ArcGIS Pro, Survey123, ArcGIS for workflow

For more information, contact our technical sales support at Sambus Geospatial Nigeria Limited:

Tesini P. Dombo

Tdombo@sambusgeospatial.com

+234 809 114 2089