Pipeline and Survey Data for Long-Term Asset Management

The estimated worth of the Water Authority’s infrastructure is over $5 billion. Effective management of these assets yields savings, a smaller increase in water rates over time, and improved system reliability. The Water Authority accomplishes this through an asset management program. The purpose of the program is to ensure the most benefit from assets by maximizing their value over their lifecycle. This includes managing the construction, operation, maintenance, rehabilitation, replacement, and surplus of each asset to occur at the optimal time. Accurate pipeline data and survey information is critical for an effective risk-based asset management program. The most fundamental aspect of the asset management program is the asset registry (asset management database) defining what assets the Water Authority has and where the assets are. The Water Authority has built a spatial database over time to include all assets comprising of over 60,000 pipe sections with over 60 characteristics for each section. The primary driver of this spatial information is survey data. Although this process took the Water Authority years to compile the data, owners with limited data should not be intimidated. There are several simple things that owners can do to start building a comprehensive asset registry for better asset management. This paper will discuss the benefits of a database, the stepped approach the Water Authority has taken on data collection, ideas to capture data for new assets, and the importance of survey data.