Planning a Water Meter Program with CLASS

Water meters are an essential function of any drinking water utility, and maintenance is critical. Meter accuracy is important to ensure that the customer is billed correctly and the utility does not experience lost revenue. An acceptable level of non-revenue water is inevitable but can be minimized with a control program designed to strategically target meters outside of their acceptable operating accuracy ranges. Citizens has over 340,000 active water meters serving 800,000 people in the Indianapolis area. In 2018, Citizens launched a continuous improvement initiative with Citizens Lean and Six Sigma (CLASS) to audit and document all water meter processes. In 2020, Citizens established a strategic replacement program to address aged and underperforming water meters by analyzing historical test data. This paper will describe the efforts made to date on creating a water meter program manual to effectively implement a strategic replacement program to address 40+ year old meters.