Asset Management for Water & Sewer Utilities

Most of what a water and sewer utility maintains is out of sight. Mains run under the street, lift stations sit behind chain-link fences, and nobody thinks about a manhole until it overflows. That makes asset management harder here than in other public works divisions. There are more assets spread over more locations, regulators watch the work closely, and a lot of knowledge walks out the door when a long-time foreman retires.

This article covers the practical side of building a water and sewer asset program: what to put in the system and why. It skips the GASB 34 background and the enterprise asset management theory.

The asset classes that matter

You do not need 200 asset categories. These six groups, set up as a hierarchy, cover most utilities:

• Linear assets: water mains, sewer mains, force mains, laterals, storm drains.
• Point assets on the network: hydrants, valves, manholes, cleanouts, meters, backflow preventers.
• Stations: lift stations, booster stations, pressure-reducing stations, treatment plants.
• Treatment process equipment: pumps, motors, blowers, clarifiers, filters, chemical feed systems.
• Storage: elevated tanks, ground storage, reservoirs.
• Instrumentation: SCADA points, flow meters, pressure transducers.

Each asset belongs to a class, and each class has a default PM template. An individual asset can override its template when it needs to. That covers most of the data model.

Why GIS belongs at the center

Water and sewer assets are laid out on a map, and managing them as a flat list makes the job harder than it needs to be. A setup that works well looks like this:

• ESRI ArcGIS is the spatial system of record. It holds what is where and how it is connected.
• The CMMS is the operational system of record. It holds what work was done on which asset, when, by whom and at what cost.
• The two sync in both directions. An asset added in GIS shows up in the CMMS, and a maintenance event logged in the CMMS shows up on the GIS map, without anyone re-entering it.

If a CMMS you are evaluating treats GIS as somewhere to send exports, and not as a system it stays in sync with, expect to spend years working around that. More on what to ask vendors here.

What to capture per asset

It is tempting to track 40 fields per asset. Crews will not fill them all in, and half-complete records are worse than none because people trust them more than they should. Start with this minimum:

• Asset ID (matching the GIS feature ID)
• Asset class
• Location (lat/lng or station and offset)
• Install date (estimated if unknown)
• Manufacturer, model and size
• Material (for mains: ductile iron, PVC, AC, cast iron)
• Most recent condition assessment (date and score)
• QR or barcode tag (for lookup in the field)

Warranty details, contractor information, drawings and manuals can all go in as attachments. A document attached to a solid record is more useful than a set of structured fields that stay empty.

Required PM and compliance work

Most water and sewer utilities have recurring work that regulations require. A CMMS pays for itself in part by making that work easy to audit. Common examples:

• Hydrant flow testing (annual or every two years, per AWWA standards)
• Backflow assembly inspection (annual)
• Valve exercising (annual)
• Lift station preventive maintenance (monthly, quarterly and annual cycles)
• Manhole inspection (varies by jurisdiction)
• SSO reporting (required for any sanitary sewer overflow in many states)
• Meter testing and replacement schedules

Each of these should be set up as a recurring PM template in the CMMS, with completion records that stay put when staff change. When an auditor or regulator asks, those records are your answer.

The locate ticket workflow

Damage to underground utilities is one of the most expensive problems in this field that can be prevented. Locate tickets come in through 811, MissDigg or Utilisync depending on your state, and they should land in the same system as the rest of your work. A ticket arrives and is assigned to a locator. The locator marks it complete with photos, and the record can be searched later. If locate tickets sit in an inbox separate from your work orders, you are running two systems and taking on the risk that something falls between them.

Capital planning from operational data

An asset registry also supports capital planning. The question it helps answer is which $50M of pipe should we replace over the next 10 years? Good operational records give you the inputs:

• Failure history for each pipe segment
• Material and install year (a rough guide to remaining useful life)
• Customer impact of each failure
• Cost of each failure, including labor, parts, customer notices and regulatory reporting

AI summaries built on that data are starting to help utilities rank replacement projects with more evidence behind the ranking than the judgment calls many still rely on. Engineers still review and adjust the list. More on AI in operations here.

What success looks like in 12 months

1. Critical assets (lift stations, hydrants, backflow assemblies) all have a record with location, install year and a recent inspection.
2. Regulatory PM is scheduled, with work orders generated automatically.
3. Locate tickets are tracked in the same system as work orders.
4. Crews can scan a QR tag in the field and see the asset's history before they start work.
5. You can produce the annual PM compliance report in about five minutes.

You do not need an enterprise EAM for any of this. A current CMMS with native GIS integration will handle it.

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WorkmanIQ includes two-way ESRI ArcGIS integration, locate ticket workflows and water and sewer asset templates in the base platform. See the modules →