The City of Ottawa’s Approach to Minimizing Risk through Its Condition Assessment Program

The city of Ottawa is regularly confronted with challenges assessing the condition of large diameter water transmission mains. Planned construction as well as ongoing maintenance activities must be coordinated to ensure service level requirements are maintained and are a few of the many obstacles the city must manage when performing condition assessments. When encountered with such challenges, the city of Ottawa must mitigate and manage risks associated with condition assessment inspections. To develop a risk mitigation strategy, the city of Ottawa along with its consultants work to develop risk management plans to address foreseeable challenges associated with the pipeline condition assessment. The paper will present the city of Ottawa’s approach to minimizing risk in the condition assessment program. Addressing risk through contingency plans, managing risks external to the condition assessment inspection, and adapting the overall project plan when unforeseeable risks arise will all be discussed. The paper will present how staff manage risk through a case study with the total cost of the inspections as well as risk mitigation measures included.