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abstract
This paper describes a Geospatial Total Asset Management System (TAMS) developed for a Southeast Asian country to promote infrastructure improvement decision making and better facilitate proactive management of water utility infrastructure across their many operating companies.
iNtrODUCtiON
Current State
The client, a large national water company, is tasked to: • Construct, upgrade, and maintain assets related
to water infrastructure
• Obtain financing and lease assets for operations and maintenance.
The country’s water infrastructure, built
progressively for 50 years, is in poor condition and requires major investment. Also, its water systems are decentralized and operated by individual states. Therefore, it is difficult for the federal government to plan capital spending and manage risk.
To successfully manage these systems and the financial investment required to improve and sustain them, the water company adopted an Asset Management Strategy and developed a new enterprise tool to facilitate asset management. GeoDecisions, Gannett Fleming’s information technology division, worked with the client and contractor to develop TAMS as the enterprise tool to enable comprehensive management and informed decision making.
asset Management – a Process
Asset management is a process that integrates the operations of all facets of an organization to best optimize how they spend time, money, and resources on managing infrastructure assets over their entire life cycle. At the core of asset management is a risk-based approach that supports prioritized investment in infrastructure renewal. Key requirements and objectives include:
• Establish policy and organization to guide and execute the process
• Establish and maintain a Level of Service (LOS) and measurable objectives meeting expectations of stakeholders (customers, government,
investors, management)
• Establish an accurate asset inventory with condition and criticality attributes
• Proactively manage the asset condition to maintain the LOS at lowest possible cost • Coordinate asset management with financial
planning so that future costs and annual budgets are predictable and manageable without imposing unforeseen and unnecessary cost escalation on system customers.
Figure 1: Facets of the Organization and Their Perspectives, represents that different parts of a utility organization may have a different perspective about what Asset Management is to them. The asset management process must be executed to bring these organizational elements together for the common mission, vision, and objectives of the organization.
Fall 2013
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a Geo Spatial total asset Management System (taMS)
to improve asset Management Decision Making
Figure 1: Facets of the Organization and Their Perspectives This typically requires a business optimization process using facilitated workshops and workflow mapping.
Figure 2: The Workshop Approach to Developing the Management Plan, is intended to simply illustrate the inputs and outputs to this process.
Figure 3: Asset Management – A Collaborative Approach
BaSiC CONCePtS OF aSSet MaNaGeMeNt
To understand the value and necessity of an information management tool to facilitate asset management, it is necessary to have a general understanding of the analysis required to support sound decision making.
asset inventory
Asset List
Fundamentally, this is a list of the physical assets of the system. For a water and wastewater utility, the assets can be categorized as linear and facility assets. Linear assets include:
• Transmission/Distribution system: Pipes, valves, hydrants, meters, service laterals
• Collection System: manholes, pipes, service laterals, meters, outfalls.
Facility assets include:
• Water Treatment and Pumping Facilities with all the individual systems, structures and equipment
• Storage reservoirs and tanks • Dam structures
• Wastewater treatment facilities with the individual systems, structures and equipment • Pumping stations.
Asset Attributes
Each asset must be described with particular attributes. These will vary by asset category. For Figure 2: The Workshop Approach to Developing the
Management Plan
In the end, all parts of the organization must be engaged in the asset management process.
Figure 3: Asset Management – A Collaborative Approach, illustrates the simple concept in which all parts of the organization are included and integrated. Shared use of information technology is key, crossing all parts of the organization.
fixed linear assets, examples of attributes that may be readily identified include:
• Location coordinates • Materials,
• Installation year • Original life in years
• Maintenance requirements per year • Annual maintenance costs per year • Original cost.
Asset Condition
Equally important, but sometimes more difficult to determine, is the asset condition. In many cases, systems may assess condition simply on age and percent of expected life. However, actual condition assessments may reveal more asset life and scheduled repair and replacement prior to catastrophic failure may help realize this extended life. Examples of condition assessments and attributes include:
• Pipe repair history • Operability of valves
• Flow and operability of hydrants • Video condition assessment of sewers • Leak detection of distribution pipes.
These attributes are used to determine the remaining life of assets and the likelihood of failure if nothing is done. This evaluation is then used to rank assets for repair and replacement. Typically, a numeric system is adopted to categorize the asset condition or its “probability of failure.”
Criticality
Criticality is another attribute that is necessary to complete the decision making process when prioritizing, budgeting, and scheduling repairs and replacement. Criticality is basically the assessment of the “consequence of failure” to the operation of the system. Extreme examples of highly critical system elements might include:
• A single transmission main between a water treatment plant or tank and the distribution system that would result in total loss of supply if it fails
• Power supply to a water treatment plant that does not have an emergency generator
• A booster pumping station to an isolated part of a distribution system
• A distribution main to a hospital.
Examples of less critical assets might include: • A line valve on a distribution main
• A small main serving only one or two homes. To fully assess criticality, a risk assessment review is typically performed by the utility and numeric ranks are determined to describe the “consequence of failure.”
Reliability and Redundancy
Criticality is often mitigated by redundancy or reliability. If there is a backup piece of equipment or parallel pipe, the likelihood of a critical failure is remote. If the reliability of an asset is proven, the risk of failure is unlikely. An example of this might be a fixed asset such as a concrete reservoir. In many cases these are judgment determinations that need to be fully discussed within the organization.
Asset Rating
After these evaluations are completed, the assets can be ranked and prioritized for repair and replacement. Importantly, when systems are not in a state of good repair and the asset management program is in its infancy, these rankings may change from year to year as the system is brought into a state of good repair.
Figure 4: Registry of Asset Ratings illustrates the ranking categories for generic assets and the rating that derived as the product of the rankings. Simply stated, the condition, reliability, and redundancy are summed to identify the Probability of Failure (PoF) which is multiplied by the Criticality (Consequence of Failure (CoF)) to determine an overall Asset Rating.
Figure 5: Asset Rating Graphic, illustrates how particular assets may be categorized graphically as the product of Probability of Failure and Consequence of Failure. The prioritization of improvements and allocation of funds should be directed towards the highest priority assets (e.g., in the red square). The long-term objective is to mitigate the assets with high criticality via repair, replacement, and/or redundancy. A system in a state of good repair would have no assets in the red region of the graph.
Figure 6: Repair and Replacement Costs by Year Figure 5: Asset Rating Graphic
replacement and renewal Budget
The ratings and prioritization are combined with a database of cost information for repair and replacement to determine annual costs that are
typically budgeted forward over several years. Figure 6: Repair and Replacement Costs by Year illustrates the outcome of this analysis in which the first years of the plan require more funding which then stabilize as the system is brought into “a state of good repair.”
This financial analysis is combined with costs for operations and other capital improvements to define a long term spending plan. This is then combined with a financial plan that will include both borrowing and tariffs to combine both revenue and expenses to assure a well budgeted path forward.
aSSet MaNaGeMeNt iNFOrMatiON
teChNOLOGY tOOL
For small systems, a spreadsheet approach to asset inventory may be adequate. For large complicated systems, a robust tool that includes the following is invaluable:
• A geospatial inventory database
• Analytical tools for criticality, hydraulic connectivity, and graphic presentation
• Charts and curves representing key performance indicators
• Financial information
• Computerized maintenance management system software.
This type of integrated tool supports collaboration by all parts of the enterprise and pays significant dividends toward successful implementation of an asset management program.
taMS - an integrated enterprise tool for
asset Management
An example of TAMS was developed for the National Water Company in Southeast Asia. The integrated management plan identified the need for an asset management information tool to facilitate execution of the asset management strategy. The system included:
• GIS mapping
• Hydraulic modeling data and results • SCADA information
• Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
• Backend database systems • Financial software packages • Document management systems
• Customized system analytics for decision making and performance indicators • Dashboard type user interface.
This system is described in the following sub-sections.
System Development
TAMS development included the following tasks: • Surveying data sources to identify asset
information availability from legacy information technology systems and software tools used by state operators
• Locating, mapping, and assessing the condition of assets
• Developing data integration tools enabling data rollup from GIS, Financial, CMMS and SCADA • Developing a geospatial, web-based asset
management dashboard highlighting Key Process Indicators (KPI’s) and frequently accessed reports and charts
• Developing decision support tools that go beyond asset inventory to include risk and consequence of failure and financial, social and environmental impacts.
System integration
Integrating the varied applications used throughout the enterprise was a critical component of the construction of this system. Systems that could be combined for this type of application include:
• Financial and resource management • Capital project management
• Maintenance management • Analytical tools
• Asset data management • Geospatial data management • SCADA system data management.
Including the geospatial platform using GIS provides a user friendly system that is easy to query and assess compared to tabular database type systems. Figure 7: Integrated System Architecture illustrates the high-level system architecture. Existing servers and software from three state systems were integrated with new software.
Figure 7: High-Level Technical Design Plan Showing Integrated System Architecture
System Dashboard
The dashboard was developed to allow users from various departments to access enterprise-wide information. The following figures illustrate the overall functionality of the system.
Figure 8: User-Defined Dashboard, illustrates the basic human-machine interface. The user can customize this dashboard to best manage day to day, planning, and monitoring activities. Simple tabs allow navigation throughout the system.
Figure 8: User-Defined Dashboard
Figure 9 - Map Interface on Dashboard – Water Pipes, illustrates how pipes within a user-defined area identify material attributes, age, connectivity, condition, and hydraulic capacity. This can be performed for all types of asset classes.
Figure 9- Map Interface on Dashboard – Water Pipes
Figure 10- Asset Condition Tabulation, illustrates the data input screen for asset condition and criticality. User input judgments can be saved and then
adjusted as required to represent improvements due to maintenance or replacement. The system can be designed with the flexibility to add new categories specific to the system.
Figure 12- Asset Condition Summary, shows a simple pie chart that summarizes system wide condition rankings for a particular asset class. This type of summary provides management level snapshots of system conditions. Graphics can be user defined and are invaluable also for tracking key performance indicators and change over time.
Figure 10- Asset Condition Tabulation
Figure 11- Asset Condition Ranking, shows the outcome of the risk-based condition assessment process in tabular format. In this example, the Probability of Failure and Consequence of Failure is multiplied to provide an overall risk-based score for each asset. Asset hydraulic capacity is included so capacity impact of failure can also be quantified.
Figure 11- Asset Condition Ranking
Figure 12- Asset Condition Summary
Figure 13- Asset Inventory Data from Computerized
Maintenance Management System (CMMS) data,
illustrates the integration of CMMS data into the front end dashboard. The system can be queried beyond this inventory level to provide maintenance information.
Figure 13- Asset Inventory Data from CMMS
Figure 14- Work Order from CMMS., shows a work order generated via the system. The integration of geospatial data in the GIS system allows users to assess and schedule work orders using a routing analysis to improve maintenance efficiency.
Jon Pollack, Vice President, GeoDecisions Division
GeoDecisions
[email protected] 602.553.8817
William allis, P.e., Vice President, Water Market Leader
Gannett Fleming, Inc.
[email protected] 717.763.7211
CONCLUSiON
Asset management is a risked-based process that can guide a utility toward prioritized infrastructure improvement decision making. The process
can transform a utility from its current state of infrastructure condition to a state of good repair while cost effectively maintaining the level of service required by stakeholders.
An integrated geospatial TAMS can facilitate this process for complex systems. TAMS benefits:
• Access to infrastructure information throughout all departments of the utility
• Improved risk management for large systems • Improved financial efficiency through
prioritization and cost benefit analyses
• Decision making justification to support program funding
• Improved understanding of asset condition and criticality
• Effective process and maintenance program performance monitoring.
