Historically, the water industry’s approach to asset management has been reactive: ”find and fix” as failures occur, set capital budgets based on the previous year’s spending, and favour maintaining the operational status quo over reducing long-term system risk. A key reason for this approach has been the lack the robust tools and technology capable of making more proactive, forward-thinking approaches cost- and time-effective.
One problem with reactive approaches is that they lead enterprises to spend money on the same asset over and over again without eliminating the problem or improving serviceability. Another larger issue is that as the infrastructure ages, its failure rates increase exponentially. Reactive measures simply cannot keep pace with (or outrun) system deterioration, and efforts to maintain appropriate serviceability begin to produce extremely large funding gaps. These trends have not gone unnoticed by government regulators.
Background
Since privatisation, water industry funding in the United Kingdom has been based on Asset Management Plans (AMPs). Every five years, all water companies must submit to the UK National Office of Water (Ofwat) their proposed spending plans for the next five years. In the early days, these submissions were largely based on previous spending, particularly in relation to capital maintenance, since it was impossible to forecast the locations and numbers of blockages and collapses. The assumption was that such data would remain roughly the same.
Changing the system
In recent years, water companies began to se that they were spending more and more on maintenance, yet finding it increasingly difficult to maintain serviceability. At the same time, Ofwat was becoming more reluctant to continue increasing budgets without justification. The major change occurred during AMP3 (the third five-year AMP cycle), when the Capital Maintenance Planning Common Framework (CMPCF) was introduced. This guideline was aimed at moving companies away from the “this is what we’ve always done” approach toward a risk-based, forward-looking method based on analysis of their historical data.
Ofwat now sets the criteria by which it judges water companies’ compliance with the Common Framework, and scores them against each criterion to determine what percentage of their requested capital maintenance budget they receive. Companies assessed as complying with the criteria receive a greater percentage than companies assessed as falling short.
Another major development has been the rewriting of the WRc Sewer Rehabilitation Manual, renamed the Sewerage Risk Management Manual. As the new name suggests, its emphasis has shifted to a risk-based approach in line with the Common Framework. In determining future expenditure companies can no longer simply submit a figure based on previous spending plus inflation.
Customer expectations are also higher, particularly since privatisation. People expect not to experience sewage inside their properties if it rains or a sewer blocks. They expect to be able to commute without falling into a hole caused by a collapsed sewer. Companies therefore have no option but to raise their games. This makes it more critical than ever to know the location of assets and how they are performing.
June returns
The figures from the last Ofwat June Return show that the water industry in England and Wales owns 374,000km of sewers, comprising around 7.56 million pipes. Of these, 104,000 are critical sewers on which the water companies must report, including the number surveyed each year. In 2009, just under 2000km were surveyed - not an enormous proportion, but a vast amount of data to handle. The majority of these assets are buried. They are also spread over thousands of square kilometres - as are the 4337 properties that flooded internally last year due to causes such as blockages, collapses and equipment failure. Records show there were 172,500 blockages, nearly 6000 collapses, and over 1000 pollution incidents in 2009.
Data underpins all of these records, but data alone is not enough. It must be gathered accurately and in a form that can easily be turned into usable information. The key to managing these companies’ assets more efficiently is GIS. It not only allows them to see the location of their assets - it reveals where they are failing.
Ten years ago, GIS was more or less a mystery. - It was used mainly by major software companies, many of whom did not understand their customers’ needs and therefore did not always deliver a useful product. Some companies and councils had such bad experiences with these early systems that they are still wary of GIS.
Severn Trent’s DAP program
Severn Trent’s 2000 Drainage Area Plan (DAP) program included a major CCTV program which was expected to produce a considerable quantity of data to be managed. This program proved a turning point in the company’s use of GIS.It had GIS details of its sewers, but nothing that could link the CCTV data to them. Fortuitously, MWHSoft had developed InfoNet. Severn Trent had been using the software purely to hold CCTV data. Now, they incorporated it into the data cleansing and validation element of the DAP model build process. This freed up InfoWorks to be used for hydraulic analysis.
Since then, the company has continued to develop its use of InfoNet. It now holds details of nearly 300,000 surveys, all referenced to the pipe surveyed. This data is used to formulate the company’s June return, asset inventory and price review submissions. When the company is being audited and the auditor requests details on the pipes surveyed during the year, InfoNet can quickly provide a list, a very impressive capability.
In fact, the Ofwat reporter for Severn Trent’s June Return 2008 noted, “The incorporation of its CCTV into the InfoNet system is commendable. It should enable the company to make use of the benefits of the data produced for Drainage Area Plans.” InfoNet has become more than simply a GIS-based data cleansing tool and CCTV database; it can also be used as a proactive management tool for company assets. At Severn Trent, InfoNet has been used as part of the Periodic Review 2009 (PR 09) process. When shown the data held in InfoNet and the work the firm had undertaken to program maintenance, one of the reporters said, “We believe that the company’s use of this software and the further applications that they are investigating for its use, for example maintenance scheduling, is industry leading.”
Applications
The first InfoNet application Severn Trent Water used was the CCTV tool. The company has a CCTV framework that uses InfoNet for data management. Once it identifies the pipes to be examined, the company simply emails the contractors an InfoNet Snapshot file of the sewer records and the pipes to be surveyed. The contractors send their survey data back in the same format. The data is validated and stored in a central repository. In AMP 4, the company surveyed over 6000km of sewers, with one person managing the entire process in-house.
The company has built on this early work. Over the past two years, it has begun to manage its proactive cleansing and rehabilitation program in the same way. This effort aims to reduce the number of pollution and internal flooding incidents by reducing the number of blockages and collapses. Sewers with the highest risk of creating pollution or internal flooding are identified and prioritized. Contractors are then given a list of these sewers in InfoNet Snapshot format.
When the contractors survey the sewers, they record the condition, undertake cleansing if necessary, and report the condition after treatment. The company knows the exact condition of its assets before it intervenes as well as the condition after the intervention, with all data recorded in InfoNet. This enables the firm not only to measure the improvements made, but determine which areas need to be re-cleansed. The structural condition of the sewers is also assessed, and a rehabilitation program is produced and managed in the same way. Finally, InfoNet is central to the process of enabling Severn Trent to keep track of its contractors’ work and its cost.
The future
In AMP 5 (the fifth asset management plan period, 2010 to 2015), the company aims to take its activities one step further, using InfoNet to assist with the intervention decision-making process. The software uses SQL to analyze CCTV surveys and chooses the appropriate intervention type, whether a local repair or full-length rehabilitation, based on the defects found.
MWHSoft has ensured that many features the industry will need in the future are already part of InfoNet, particularly scheduling, pipe repair and cleansing tools. Further enhancements are in the pipeline.
One recent development is flow and depth monitoring. InfoNet has always been able to hold Time Varying Data, but the company has not needed it. However, going forward, flow and depth monitoring will be an increasingly important part of pollution strategies. These processes will produce a great deal of data that must be immediately integrated for operational purposes. If loggers report an increase in depth of flow in a sewer, the company needs to know if it was just caused by recent rains, or signals a build-up of debris.
To obtain this data and interpret it, the company is considering using hundreds, if not thousands more loggers. The data they gather will also be invaluable for long-term analysis aimed at determining strategies robust enough to be included in future price review submissions.
InfoNet can also be used to plan monitoring surveys and hold the details of the survey data, linked to the relevant assets and CCTV surveys. This gives the company an overview of the catchment and its developments, not just the monitoring point. The company is currently working on migrating the flow logger and CCTV data, into one massive InfoNet database.
Adoption of Private Drains and Sewers
The impending adoption of private sewers will be a tremendous challenge. There is no accurate data on how many there are or where they are located, let alone their condition. Companies are still deciding how to manage them, but one thing is certain - it will be necessary to store data on them, and the best way to do it will be in a GIS.
Whether pipes are surveyed proactively or only on failure, there is still a need for a significant leap in onsite data capture technology such as MWH Soft InfoNet Mobile. Severn Trent is looking into this promising technology to see if it can be incorporated into its procurement process in the next few months.
These are just a few examples of InfoNet’s capabilities. As enhanced data-gathering techniques are developed and the importance of good data is better appreciated, analysis and decision-making will become even easier and more reliable. As managers gain more confidence in the data, greater demands will be placed on analysts and software writers to deliver it.
The water industry has come a long way in the past 30 years, but that growth must continue at a rapid pace. Ofwat expects companies to manage their assets more efficiently and at least maintain serviceability. Failure to do so is not an option. The tools for success are available, and assets can be managed more efficiently than previously possible. It is up to the industry to use these tools to their full potential by working collaboratively to meet the ever-increasing expectations of both business managers and regulators.
This article is based on an original presentation by John Hateley of Severn Trent Water to the MWH Soft User Conference in September 2009. A video of the presentation can be found on our Video Presentations Page