analyzes critical asset data across the entire treatment and distribution enterprise. Asset maintenance and performance management is now prioritized by risk, which maximizes efficiency, safety and reliability. “Before MentorAPM, our asset data was fragmented and siloed between different teams and was not being used effectively,” said Sunny Wang, water resources manager at the City of Santa Monica. “We now have all the functionality needed to manage our high-profile projects and costly assets under one umbrella designed specifically for utilities seeking more sustainable operations—keeping us aligned with the basic principles of the One Water initiative.” For its work on water sustainability, Santa Monica was awarded the 2023 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence from The League of California Cities and was runner-up for the Global Water Awards Water Reuse Project of the Year for 2024. Mojave Water Agency is cutting costs with criticality and risk analysis The Mojave Water Agency (MWA) is responsible for ensuring a stable and sustainable water supply for the High Desert region in San Bernardino County, CA. Its projects cover a service area of approximately 4,900 square miles and include facilities for delivering and storing water from the State Water Project. These facilities, such as the Morongo Basin Pipeline, the Mojave River Pipeline, the Oro Grande Wash Pipeline, and the recharge basins, help meet the region's water needs. The MWA is one of 29 contractors allowed to import water from the California Aqueduct and is now entitled to almost 90,000 acre-feet of water annually, ensuring the region can recharge groundwater supplies as needed. Amid a decrease in water supply and reliability, the MWA, like many water agencies, has seen a rise in costs and operational challenges related to regional expansion, increased regulatory requirements and climate change. Complicating these challenges is aging infrastructure that poses financial and service-related risks. Having long relied on spreadsheets and the institutional knowledge of long-term staff to guide and optimize its maintenance strategy, the MWA required a more modern, data-driven approach to support their decision-making related to upgrades. The MWA decided to implement an infrastructure asset management program that would give them a complete picture of all their assets and enable them to prioritize and address high-risk areas to increase the lifespan of their assets, save money and prevent system failures. In early 2023, the MWA enlisted the expertise of MentorAPM’s asset performance management approach that began with a criticality and risk assessment, saving time and money by focusing resources on the most critical assets. The analysis involved the two teams coming together to identify all the MWA’s assets and assign a criticality rating based on the likelihood of failure and the consequences of such a failure. They considered various criteria, including the agency’s goals and mission, maintenance performed, historical data, failure rates, regulatory requirements, service levels, service agreements and staff and public safety. The Criticality
Analyzer module from the MentorAPM asset management platform captured 100 percent of MWA’s assets, providing an accurate ranking of criticality and risk based on historical data. “We didn’t always have the risk we were assuming,” said Mike Simpson, director of operations at the Mojave Water Agency. “In some cases, we had plenty of backup, or an asset wasn’t as critical as we thought. In other cases, we needed to look at an asset more closely. The criticality analysis helped us identify where resources should be allocated to minimize potential risks and where we could save money on unnecessary expenses.” “The analysis helped us determine the most essential repairs or replacements so we could address them immediately. What's exciting is that we can estimate the cost of a repair, the time it will take to make that repair, and the savings we will achieve because of it,” said Simpson, who notes that the cost savings can be redirected to additional maintenance issues or new capital investments. All hands on deck for a sustainable water future Water challenges loom large on the horizon. With weather patterns becoming dramatically more volatile and less predictable, our past approaches to water infrastructure management are no playbook for the future. Water engineers have come face-to-face with the reality that a new era of water quality threats is here, and adapting is paramount. With its ability to aid water utilities in accurately assessing risk and deriving maximum value from assets, asset management is a critical component of properly managing water resources. Using solid asset management, companies, governments and professionals worldwide can effectively and collectively preserve and maximize the value of the planet’s water. Life on earth literally depends on it.
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Summer 2024 csengineermag.com
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