Remaining Life Analysis for Wastewater and Force Main Pipes for Long-Term Life Cycle Cost Decision Support

Predicting the future performance of assets is an essential element in life cycle cost assessment (LCCA) by providing the economic remaining service life of pipelines. Performance prediction models which can provide long-term accurate remaining economic life analysis are crucial for tools for decision support for LCCA. Under Water Environmental and Reuse Foundation (WE&RF)’s strategic asset management (SAM) challenge, the remaining economic life analysis (RELAY) tool was developed. This platform provides utility managers with piloted and validated state dependent and time-dependent performance prediction models for accurate long-term remaining economical life analysis with the support of established data standards and performance indices. RELAY tool can develop deterioration curves to be used for strategic, tactical, and operational level LCCA decision support depending on the data availability. This paper presents how the remaining economic life analysis provided by the RELAY tool can be used in the long-term accurate LCCA. The demonstration includes how RELAY tool can be used to determine effective funding strategy using the principles of LCCA so that wastewater utilities can prioritize and budget for an ongoing asset management program that covers the upgrade, renewal/replacement of existing assets. The LCCA with the improved decision support with the RELAY tool is compared with the current practice of using design lives of assets with straight-line depreciation to showcase the benefits of using the new approach.